The Tea Club
by PippinStrange
Summary: The Traveler's Society of Magical Wanderings is a secret community of those who have crossed into other worlds. The founder is Alice of Wonderland. Members include Dorothy Gale of Oz, Wendy Darling, her daughter Jane, a Connecticut yankee, and many more. The obvious choice for a new inductee is the disheartened Susan Pevensie, who lost her entire family to a railway accident.
1. Till His Glory

_The Tea Club_

 _a conglomerate fan fiction novel by Mya Sanders_

 _..._

There is a secret society in London called the Tea Club. The mission; to find magic in the real world and harness power to return to lands visited only by magic, and if that is impossible, find solidarity among others who have experienced magic and know it to be real. The members are Dorothy Gale, Alice Whitmore, Wendy Darling, and many more. Reeling from the death of her family in a railway accident, Susan Pevensie is the logical choice for the club's newest member.

 _..._

 _..._

* * *

 _Chapter One_

 _Till Your Glory_

* * *

Funerals do not make for cheerful affairs in a world turned dark. It was fitting that it should rain, and Susan Pevensie, age twenty-one, accepted the additional misery with the grace of a queen.

There were five graves altogether; Mum, Dad, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy. Parents and three siblings gone in a single tragedy. The dirt was mounded and smelled of rich earth, but not so rich as another earth she's smelled before.

She reckoned Edmund would've compared it to chocolate. Lucy might have dared him to taste it. He would have, too. Then Peter would slip Lucy a bill from his pocket.

Susan would have scolded Edmund till his ears bled with it. _You've soiled your shirt,_ she'd say, _And lord knows what sort of sicknesses you could get. There's baking soda in the loo, go clean your teeth immediately!_ When a disgruntled Ed would leave, she'd say to Peter and Lu, _don't you dare encourage him! Fancy you all still acting like children! It's positively horrific!_

It almost smelled like a real memory. Which, like an addiction, only made her remember more.

"We're trying to go back to Narnia," Lucy had said, delicate arms folded around her knees, perched at the end of Susan's bed in her London flat, a boarding house that she shared with the other working girls. Susan was getting ready for a late shift at the hotel, where she was a switchboard operator. The room was warm with sunlight from the window, the usual dead air of midsummer relieved by an infantile breeze, stirring the white curtains from the open sash.

"Narnia?" Susan asked absently, staring at her figure in the mirror. She wasn't telling Lucy, but she was preparing for a seduction. A young man that worked in the offices next door. They'd been meeting for lunch for weeks now. She noticed that now, when he saw her approaching in the plaza, he would take off his wedding ring and put it into his breast pocket. For her comfort.

She thought it was sweet of him.

"You know, Narnia," Jill Pole said brashly, "That place where you were Queen."

Susan felt the deep ache that she always felt every time they brought up Narnia. Why Lucy and the rest were so obsessed with the games they used to play as children, she would never understand. But it always caused the same ache, as if she _wished_ she could play along too. But she couldn't. It didn't matter to her anymore.

"Pole," Susan said briskly, "We mustn't touch what isn't ours."

Jill quickly replaced the bottle of perfume she'd been examining at Susan's vanity. "Ghastly stuff," she replied.

"Then don't wear it," Susan said sharply.

Lucy sighed. "Stop fussing at yourself. You look beautiful."

"I know," Susan said softly. "But there's something missing."

"Lipstick?" Jill offered sarcastically.

"You'll be a woman yet, Pole," Susan laughed, applying bright red lipstick. She was a knock out. "It's important to look your best for work."

"Or for whatever happens after," Jill replied with a sneer.

"Forget about the date," Lucy pleaded, knowing without Susan having to explain. "Meet us after your shift. We're having dinner at Kirk's."

Susan shook her head. "I do not break engagements after I've already made them."

"Professor Kirk believes in Narnia," Lucy said abruptly. "So does Peter, Aunt Polly, Ed, Jill, Scrubb, me..."

"Narnia was a story we made up when we were bored from the rain," Susan said patiently. "You've always had an overactive imagination."

"You can't say we are _all_ mad," Lucy argued. "Maybe me. But all of us? Look at the majority, Susan."

"Majority put Hitler in power, I wouldn't use that in an argument," Susan said plaintively. "Professor Kirk believes because he is an elderly, impressionable man, who's lost all his money. He can't function, so he uses your fairy stories to build himself a wall of comfort to help him cope. He's losing his memory and coordination. That's what happens when people age, Lu."

"What about Ed and Peter?"

"They believe because the professor believes. You know they worship the ground he walks on." Susan adjusted her dress once more. It shaped her waist so nicely. The lipstick was a nice touch. "Darling," she said, turning to Lucy, "Don't you have anything better to do that to continue trying to rope me in to your fantasies? Lies don't suit you, Lucy, they never have. I wish you'd grow up."

"What, like you?" Jill said, her elbow bumping the vanity. Glass bottles clattered together.

"Careful!" Susan darted over to the table and righted the bottles. "These are very expensive. Now I can't have you two ninnies mucking about and arguing about your old games when I have a _real_ job and _real_ people out there waiting for me. See yourselves home, please."

She picked up her handbag and coat, buttoning the sailor's lapels with professional speed. She turned a critical eye towards her sister and her old friend. "I wish you'd let me do your hair," she said earnestly. "You're nearly eighteen, Lucy, and you, Pole... you'd be so pretty if you'd at least make some effort. These times won't last forever, you know. You should be planning for a future before it slips away from you."

"There's more to life than wearing the right clothes to snag a husband," Jill scoffed.

Susan stared at her levelly. "Not for women, darling. Not in this life or the next." When she left, she stopped again at the hall mirror to check her appearance, setting a wayward curl to rights. By the time she had arrived at work, she had stopped at half a dozen window reflections to obsessively check again.

Her coworkers, eight other women from a variety of classes and stages of life, greeted her with nods and waves. She settled into her seat and put on her headset. The lines were already beginning to light up and buzz. It was going to be a busy day...

Her lunch period was spent in _his_ office.

"You are... unlike anyone I've met before," he had whispered, "But my, my wife... I mean, I shouldn't..."

She gave him a long kiss to say goodbye, and he begged her to call in sick for the rest of the day, to complain of a headache... anything. They could get a room. After all, she _worked_ at the hotel. She had a fresh pair of nylons, without snags or tears, tucked in her purse, for such occasions as this.

"I couldn't possibly," she smiled, "I wouldn't want to bore you. You must learn to miss me."

When she walked back to her switchboard, she felt that same, watery feeling in the pit of her stomach. An emptiness that could never be explained away, one that another man might be able to fill. Clearly this wasn't the one. She'd have to try someone else. She would keep destroying as many men as possible until she found one that did not make _her_ feel destroyed.

She checked her reflection obsessively.

"Nice lunch?" replied Betty, who always sat beside her.

"Oh, he was scrumptious," Susan winked.

Betty sighed. "Oh, I wish I were brave like you, having boyfriends and going to parties and the like."

Susan laughed, and tugged Betty's lank hair. "Let me do your hair sometime, and you can borrow some of my old make up. I really think you could shape your waist if you used a belt, just like they do in the catalogues."

"You're such a wicked girl!"

"I could make a wicked one out of you."

"No, no," Betty giggled, "I couldn't possibly. My parents would just die!"

"So would mine," Susan said, and she had laughed so gaily, then she went out to have a smoke. Betty followed, and Susan made her try cigarettes until she stopped coughing. Betty was very brave, keeping at it until she could light up without any help. Susan explained to her that smoking was the new sexy.

The dirt made thickening clumps on the coffins, a thump every time more was shoveled in. Soon there would be no sight of it, and their bodies would be trapped underground, forever.

Susan had a horrible thought... what if one of them woke up? Pounded on the coffin lid until their hands were broken? No one would hear them. Then they would die all over again.

The night she declined the dinner invitation at Professor Kirk's, there was a party. Boys on leave, relieved that the war was over and they had made it out alive, seemed to be making up for lost time. In the dark, smoky rooms of the private apartments of the Branson boys, Susan had soda and whiskey to loosen up. She graduated to scotch before long, savoring the crisp, golden liquid lighting her limbs and hormones on fire.

Like a bird of prey, she searched until she spotted a lonely one in a corner. She put a glass to his lips and said, "Drink, soldier. You look like you could use some courage."

Stunned at her beauty, he drank quickly. They always did.

He swelled with self-importance as they conversed. She used her words to worship his entire sad, self-made-man story. These war survivor types seemed all the same to her. Needy. Needing approval, needing her gaze, needing her everything. She acted as if she had never met a soldier before. As if he single-handedly won the war for her.

Before he knew what was happening, they were snogging in an unoccupied corner.

For her, it was another victory. For him, it was a temptation now satisfied. The only thing he would have to deal with now is the consequences. _If_ there were any.

She got home that night at three in the morning. She stopped by the bathroom, hearing Mary-Ann, one of the flatmates, crying behind the closed door. "Is that you, Mary Ann?" she asked quietly. "Anything I can do for you?"

Mary Ann cried back, rather harshly, "There is nothing _you_ can do, Susan Pevensie! Unless your fashion-sense and hair products can save my brother from dying!"

Susan balked from the door. "Don't blame me for your brother's poor health," she replied snappishly. "Come to my room when you're ready to apologize and need some lotion to fix the red puffiness around your eyes."

"Sod off!"

"Suit yourself," Susan said regally. Mary Ann refused to look her best most of the time, and tonight wouldn't be any different. If only she'd let Susan have a go at her, but she probably didn't have enough self-respect for it. Mary Ann thought it was better to be homely and proud than beautiful and vain, which Susan saw as the lesser evil.

The next morning, the communal telephone rang in the hall. "It's for you, Su," Molly handed the earpiece to Susan. She accepted and leaned casually against the door frame into the parlor.

"Hello?" she said.

"Susan, it's me," it was Lucy's voice. "Something amazing happened last night. Something... just mad!"

Susan laughed. "I thought you were having dinner at the old Professor's, you little tease. You went out, didn't you? You finally met someone."

"Uh, no, nothing like that," Lucy stumbled, unsure. "Something magical happened."

"Then tell me all about it, you silly goose!"

"Well, I can't now. Can we get brunch this week?"

Susan examined her fingernails. They were chipped, in need of a polish. "Can't today," she said carelessly.

"Tuesday?"

"Hair appointment."

"Wednesday?"

"I go out with Laurel every Wednesday, you know that."

"Thursday."

"I have a date."

"All right, Friday, then," Lucy huffed, frustrated.

"Certainly, Friday... wait, no, not Friday," Susan said quickly. "Going dancing that night."

"Saturday morning, then."

"Not too early," Susan replied.

"No," Lucy smiled slightly, "Not too early. But Saturday, for certain?"

"Saturday will be just fine. See you then, Lucy."

But she didn't see Lucy on Saturday, either.

She left the funeral early, clutching a handbag from Selfridge's, lowering a black veil over her face so that no one would see the puckered mouth of displeasure and the tears of grief trying to escape.

As much as this tore her apart, as much as she wanted to break down... she refused. She wanted to fall to her knees and scream, and cry until she killed herself, but she just _couldn't._ She could not destroy the image she had worked so hard for... it wasn't fair.

It wasn't polite to grieve in public, everyone knew that!

Susan believed it was a sign of her resilience, her inner strength, that no tragedy could smear her mascara. But it was really a sign of profound weakness. Even in the darkness of the worst moment of her life, she still cared more about what other's thought of her, than the loss she had endured. For the past six years, there was a battle waging between her superficiality and her soul. Her armor was made of material goods, her body was her weapon. Her soul had gone to sleep a long time ago, and she liked the idea that it might never wake up.

Who needs goodness? Who needs light in the darkness? _Who needs love?_

Not Susan Pevensie. Not if she believed love cast her out long ago. She was banished, and decided to replace love with whatever else she could find... good looks. A full closet. Make up. Alcohol. Lovers. If she could only find the right combination of them all to create herself anew, till she could no longer recognize herself.

She wanted to be lost. _See,_ she seemed to say, _This is what you've done to me. I hope you're happy. This is all YOUR fault._

 _Take away my crown. Take away my home. I will take away all the righteousness you once gave me, till there is none of you left. Till your glory doesn't exist anymore. Till by my own making, I will forget. I have forgotten._

...

...

* * *

Please review! :) It would mean so much to me. I was simply struck by the idea that Susan's story needed to be told and that there was a lot more to it than believed...


	2. A Curious Invitation

_The Tea Club_

 _a conglomerate fan fiction novel by Mya Sanders_

 _..._

There is a secret society in London called the Tea Club. The mission; to find magic in the real world and harness power to return to lands visited only by magic, and if that is impossible, find solidarity among others who have experienced magic and know it to be real. The members are Dorothy Gale, Alice Whitmore, Wendy Darling, and many more. Reeling from the death of her family in a railway accident, Susan Pevensie is the logical choice for the club's newest member.

 _..._

 _..._

* * *

 _Chapter Two_

 _A Curious Invitation_

* * *

...

...

Susan Pevensie cried softly in her bedroom, having carefully washed her make up first, and lining up a row of hankies within reach. She thrust her arms across her vanity and leaned her forehead upon them, allowing herself a good cry, and every few minutes she would look up at the mirror and try to compose herself. When she found that she could not, she replaced her head within her arms and resumed her tears. It was exhausting, having no self control. Her body let grief take over and she had no say in the matter.

"You look ghastly," said a voice at her door.

Susan looked up, shoulders still heaving with whimpers. She met Mary Ann's eyes in the mirror over her shoulder.

"Go away and leave me alone," she sobbed.

Mary Ann shrugged, and Susan's own words came back to haunt her. "It's not my fault they died in a train," she said horribly, "Come see me when you're sorry. And put on your own god damn lotion for your swollen eyes."

Susan only cried harder, and buried her face in a fresh hanky.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" Mary Ann whispered. "I wonder if you have any soul at all, Susan Pevensie. Or if you're only crying because you've seen the rest of humankind do it, and you're trying to be one of us."

"Get out!" cried Molly, appearing at the door. "You heard me, Mary Ann! Get out!" She shoved Mary Ann down the hall, and shut the bedroom door.

Susan heard more cursing. "Both of you!" Molly cried with exasperation. "You're both so unbelievably cruel to each other! It's a bloody miracle the Lord doesn't smite you down both on the spot. If your brother could hear you now..."

"Well, he can't, he's dead," Mary Ann's voice drifted spitefully. "And Miss Perfect didn't give a shit! I wanted her to know how it _felt!_ "

Molly lowered her voice. "I don't know if she know's _how,"_ she reasoned, "She's filled her head with so many fancies there's no room for any truth or love, and certainly none for empathy. I don't think she _knows_ any better."

Susan gasped. She sucked in a lungful of air as if she were drowning. Didn't she know better? Didn't she love Lucy, Peter, and Edmund? Who was Molly to think that Susan Pevensie hadn't the _capability_ for love?

She cried harder. Did she _not_ just have this conversation with herself last week? She told herself she didn't need love. She was searching for that _deeper thing,_ but it couldn't possibly be love.

She hadn't acted like she loved her family lately. She tolerated them. She enjoyed them like a new hat when they were amusing, and scolded them like dogs when they annoyed her. They were pieces that made up the family unit, and the unit was her cage. She had broken out of the cage and made it clear she didn't want it anymore. They were the chains that kept her from enjoying herself. They kept trying to rope her back into that life, the one she didn't want anymore, and simultaneously excluding her because she was the only sibling that had to be coaxed. They all wanted her back, and she couldn't be bothered.

They wanted to play with lions and spells. She didn't have the luxury.

Susan dabbed at her eyes again, soiling her third hanky.

No, maybe... maybe she was the lucky one. Her life was her reward. They all had their madness, their games, their immaturity... and look where it got them? No where! They were all _dead!_

She escaped with her life. If she had remained part of their odd little world, she would have been on that train too. She would be dead at twenty-one... a tragedy unremembered.

But through her, they could live on, at least. In memoriam.

Susan Pevensie refused to be gentle. She was a Phoenix.

She was the odd Pevensie out who wasn't on the train; it must be a sign that she was really in the right all along!

The universe must have smiled upon Susan and said, _Live vivaciously and loudly, dear heart. You deserve it and more._ Though Susan suspected the universe would never call her _dear heart._ That sounded like someone else entirely, a voice in her head that didn't belong. Everything else rang true for the universe-but dear heart? Where did _that_ term of endearment come from? She knew well enough that hearing voices in one's head was a sign of true insanity, and she could be committed to an asylum if she shared it. Which is why it must be a simple symptom of her grief. It would pass.

...

The gray week moseyed by, dreary and wet. Every minute felt like an hour. Every hour spent awake was a migraine.

Susan didn't have her parents to fall back on. Her father had always been ready with a smile and a willing cheque-book. But there was nothing now, and Susan had to self-support. She kept her job, but she begged a few days off to recover from shock. Her boss dutifully complied. It helped that he was in love with her. It was wonderful to have so many male companions at a time of tragedy. Each pair of arms were willing to comfort and cherish her as long as she needed it.

But even as she relished attention, she resented the fatigue it caused in her soul. Her playacting wouldn't change the empty flat, gathering dust, belonging to Peter and Edmund near Oxford. Nothing would fill the void left emptied by her sister's laughter and trusting heart. Nothing could bring life to the house in Finchley and make her parents walk the kitchen again, or collect the bottled milk on the porch step in the wee hours of the morning.

After her first day back at work, they urged her to go home early.

"My voice hasn't choked up once," Susan said, a little offended, rubbing the dark birthmark on her inner wrist. It always ached, as if it were a sailor's tattoo, whenever she felt anxious and depressed.

"But, darling," said Betty, "You look _awful._ "

It cut Susan like a knife through the ribs. It didn't matter how _beautiful_ she looked; the condition of her heart made her look awful. Her hair was perfect, her skin flawless, her teeth adorably crooked within rosebud lips. And yet, she looked _awful._ Sadness had invaded every pore. Grief was etched in every shadow like a Renaissance painting in high contrasts. "You're right," Susan replied briskly. "I do feel a bit poorly. I think I'll go home."

It was pouring rain, harsh and the wettest of wet, around three p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon.

"Of course it would be raining," Edmund said, their first morning at the Professor's. Then they played hide and seek... and then... her memory was hazy.

"I do believe," Susan thought, with a characteristic shrug of indifference, "That was the first time that Lucy made up all those stories of Narnia and the goat men and the fairies and..." Susan paused, memories as hazy as the post-blitz smog over London Bridge. Lucy probably borrowed a little from Grimm. And definitely Andersen, for she remembered something about the mermaids.

"Yes, that's what it was!" Susan suddenly remembered. "Lucy said the mermaids swam up to the walls of the fortress... and then the pirates attacked. Or maybe it was the turban-headed men in the south. Oh, bother! I wish she wrote all her fairy tales down! I didn't pay much attention, and now they're gone forever..."

The bleak day was dark as slate, slashing rain up her coat and ankles. Her mind spiraled into paranoia. What if the new-fangled pill she managed to get from the lady's doctor didn't really work like they promised it would? What if she became pregnant? She'd rather _die_ than get pregnant. Children were a profound nuisance.

And what about her two latest conquests? The office boy and the soldier at the party. Even for _her,_ Susan the Brave, Susan the Brazen, Susan the Beautifully Bold... _Susan the bitch..._ that was a risky move. What if one of the girls told Mrs. Harlon, the proprietor of their boarding house? _What if Mary Ann wanted revenge and got Susan kicked out?_ No one would take in a "hussy". Then she would be homeless... Part of her recklessness she owed to the fact that she could always count on her family, no matter how beastly she treated them. Peter and Edmund wouldn't have turned her away if she was kicked out of her home and needed a place to stay. They were a guaranteed fallback. Taken for granted, never to provide comfort or safety ever again.

Susan kicked a sodden newspaper out of her way on the pavement. She briefly heard a pair of footsteps join her rhythm, and an umbrella opened over her head, an instant shield against the harsh rain.

"Oh, thank-you," she said gratefully to her new companion. The woman walking beside her nearly took her breath away. She was beautiful, wearing an emerald green dress better suited to a stately riding uniform or traveling suit of 1900 than it was an every day, walk-in-the-London-rain garb. It clearly had a corset beneath, black lace, frills, and buttons along the collar, sleeves, and hem. Her boots were the type you practically had to sew shut with a crochet hook through the button holes. To top it off, a tall black hat, with a bit of black mesh hanging in front of her eyes as if she were in mourning but trying to appear available and attractive still. Susan instantly admired that, and wondered if she too had lost someone in the same train wreck.

"You're very welcome," said the woman, and Susan noted the American accent, with a soft lilt that begged _good ol' girl._ Susan sensed a country upbringing, refined by presence of high society, or perhaps even royalty. It would be a compliment to tell the woman that she could _barely_ trace the midwestern tone of a farmer's daughter, but reserved her observation for a later time. The woman's hands, which would be telling by blisters or toughness, were hidden by kid white gloves. She was probably the only person Susan could ever admit pulled off the look of being _old fashioned_ to a forty-year fault. "This rain," the woman went on, "I've never gotten used to it. I'm from a prairie."

"The umbrella is a very nice start," Susan said politely. "You're from America?"

"Kansas," she complied, confirming Susan's accurate suspicions. "Say, do you know where a woman can get a good cup of black coffee in this damn weather?"

"Brew's is likely the closest, or Tilda's Bakery, if you don't mind a step farther," Susan answered.

"I know you Brits are all for tea, but nothing beats hot coffee, fresh from a pot."

"We could walk there, if you like."

"I certainly would!" the woman's ethereal beauty outshining her dated fashion was not lost on Susan. She had dark brown eyes beneath long black lashes, curling brown hair pulled into a bun that looked more like a blooming rose than the atypical "knot", and a complexion anyone would die for. There was barely a hint of the summer gold from an American farmlands, and barely a freckle to speak of. Her face was perfectly symmetrical.

They crossed a street, passed the Brew, and made a left. Tilda's was the third shop on the left, yet another personalized bakery that sold hot drinks, sandwiches, and desserts for a remarkable price. Susan was beginning to see more places like this crop up throughout town, and marveled at a world without limits on sugar and flour. A childhood of rationing, and learning to accept your rations, ill-prepared Susan for a new decade beginning of plenty, and therefore, waste.

Susan gestured to the awning beside them, which they ducked beneath, and the woman closed her umbrella and hooked the crook over her elbow. "I'm Dorothy Gale," she said, holding out her hand.

"Susan Pevensie," they shook hands. "What brings you to England?"

"Relocated here entirely by accident," Dorothy admitted. "I was just... chasing a storm. That's just the trouble with me. I never really seem to get where I want to go nowadays. I used to be much better with travel. Predestination gave me up for a lost, wandering soul."

Susan nodded with a confused, but polite smile. "I'm sure you'll feel more cheerful after your coffee. This is your stop. It was very nice to meet you."

"Why don't you come in and have a coffee with me? My treat."

"I really must get on."

"Only just for a moment. Maybe I'll buy us a cake. One of those tea-cakes that you English love so much. What are they called?"

"Scones?" Susan attempted, smiling weakly.

"Oh... we have those too. But that's just what we need on a day like today! Scones! Come on in with me, I promise, I don't bite... _much._ "

Susan weakened. Overtly friendly women were usually social-climbers, flirting and conniving their way to the top, and Susan made a point to avoid them. But there was a wholesomeness that Susan wanted to believe in Ms. Gale, that she seemed just as unique and interesting as her choice in dress promised.

Dorothy picked out a table near the wall, ordered them both a coffee and a scone each. Susan hardly nibbled at the scone, but relished the coffee, grateful for something strong and bracing that wasn't scotch from her vanity or a martini at a party.

"So what's your story, Susan Pevensie?" Dorothy asked in her abrasive, nonthreatening tone.

Susan nearly choked on a mouthful. "M-My story? Oh, that wouldn't interest you. Not at all."

"Why, now I'm interested!"

"Really, I mean, I have nothing to tell," Susan protested again. "I'm a switchboard operator. I like to drink and dress up. There's nothing to me."

"Where do you live?"

"Harlon's boarding house for young ladies," Susan replied.

"Sounds like _hell,"_ Dorothy laughed easily. "Do you have any family? A husband?"

"I don't have anyone," Susan said, and for some reason, she felt herself speaking as if she were lying. And yet nothing could be more truthful.

"Anyone at all?" Dorothy repeated with genuine shock. "You mean you're all alone in the world, without any family or anything?"

Susan's hand suddenly shook so badly that her cup sloshed its contents onto the table top. She slammed it back into the saucer with an abrupt clatter. "Nobody," she said briefly, and her voice hitched.

"Oh no," Dorothy was genuinely sorry. "I'm afraid I've gone and asked too many personal questions of a woman befallen by tragedy. There's nothing worse." She pulled a blue and white gingham hanky from her sleeve, pushing into Susan's hand. It didn't match the emerald green dress at _all,_ and it was nothing more than a rag fraying at the edges. Susan let it sit in her palm and made no move to use it. "Don't worry, the interrogation is over," Dorothy went on, "You don't have to have anybody, but you can get _somebody._ Me! We're acquaintances now, aren't we?"

Before Susan could respond, she was pulling a name card from her purse. But it wasn't any normal name card, with a name, an inspirational quote, and an address for writing letters. It was a solid black card, as if it were made of pure ebony. There was a gold capital T inside a circle, some sort of emblem. On the other side of the card, there was a telephone number and an address for a tube station that Susan was pretty sure had shut down because of the bombings.

"My club card," Dorothy apologized, "but it's the only thing that has my current telephone number on it. It rings right to _my_ flat. Give me a call sometime, we'll have another sconce, and maybe you can recommend some tea."

Susan didn't bother to correct her use of the word _sconce._ She was staring with a bit of confusion at the card that Dorothy was pressing into her hand. The T within the circle looked strangely like the birthmark on her inner wrist, only the one on her wrist was a little more... scar-like. More like a bruise creating a shape than an image. But still, the similarity was curious.

"What sort of club?" she asked, trying to recover from thinking too deeply about her losses, and just why she was alone in the world. It came out in a hoarse whisper that sounded more horrified than conversational.

"Oh, you don't want to know about all that, do you?" Dorothy winked at her. "You're not ready for that conversation."

"What do you mean?" Susan felt as if Dorothy might be making fun of her. "Ready for what conversation? I'm merely curious."

"Like our matriarch says, _Curiosity is Key."_ Dorothy tapped the card. "It's called the Tea Club. Maybe you'd like to go sometime. We're not actually about tea, or drink too much of it, anyhow. It's an acronym."

Susan waited for her to explain what the T stood for.

"It's a secret society," Dorothy giggled conspiratorially.

Susan sighed in frustration. Perhaps she misjudged that wholesomeness she thought she saw... if Dorothy Gale was bragging about being a member of a secret club in public, she almost certainly was climbing for _something._ "I'm sure it's a very exclusive sort of place," she said tiredly.

"Of course it is!" Dorothy laughed. "But you are so over-qualified, you'll be a Queen amongst the rest of the members. But they'd welcome you in a flash, you know."

Susan's heart fluttered. She wondered if she was developing a condition... maybe she would suffer a stroke before the age of thirty and die young. Or maybe flattery helped ease her judgment. "What qualifies _me_?" she asked.

"Guilty by association," Dorothy answered. "I think a previous member of the club was a relation of yours. Peter Pevensie?"

Susan felt as if the floor had dropped out beneath her. Her body was no longer her own as she stood up from the table, upset the coffee, and walked towards the door. She had become a mute, oblivious to Dorothy's loud exclamations behind her, people upset that she bumped into their chairs without apologizing.

She didn't know how she walked into the street without remembering her hat, or why the automobiles were skidding and honking at the dim figure in their windshields. She was a woman alone, truly alone, and no one had a right to remind her of it. Especially strange, Kansas farm girls, teasing her and pretending to be a woman of elegance when you were really just forty years overdue for a new dress and disguising a harsh _ain't_ with English refinery.

"Damn you all to hell," Susan found herself whispering into the darkness of a cold, unlit alley. She didn't entirely remember entering it in the first place, but her panic attack seemed to be subsiding. A hole was left behind in her memory, and her heart ached like the sore muscle that it was.

The T Club card was still in her hand. And for all her idiocy and stubbornness, a moment of light bled through the overcast sky and rain threatening a monsoon. Susan did not throw the card away. She tucked it into her pocket, where, like sunshine, it merely waits its turn.

...

Another week strolled by, lazily allowing vague moments of warmth and sunshine to prevail against the ever-constant clouds and rain. There would be no reason for strangers to offer umbrellas, no reason for Susan to look twice at a person wearing emerald green with a fearful edge.

Susan misplaced the card for the T Club, forgetting which coat she had worn that day, forgetting which pocket of which coat, and forgetting which day of what week... eventually any thought of meeting Dorothy Gale had been forcibly scrubbed away, leaving only residual memories of meeting that _presumptuous American I once had coffee with._

She decided to continue to try and save money and not use a cab. All the other girls took a cab to and from work, but Susan had her concerns about money. She was no societal heiress, what little her parents had left behind were tucked safely into an account, not to be touched unless absolutely necessary. She was still paying the rent for Peter and Edmund's flat, hoping to preserve it as long as possible before she summoned the courage to visit and begin sorting their belongings for charities.

This is why Susan walked.

This is a moment, looked back upon, she would both regret it and thank God for it. She walked along this particular sidewalk, passing these particular shops and trees. She chose this side of the street because it provided the most protection from a possible rain storm. They say if you do not like the weather in England, just wait five minutes. For now, the sun shone with half-hearted flirtation, threatening darker clouds somewhere in the wicked west. Fall was coming.

She passed the opening to an alley, a thin, dark stream that smelt of refuse and urine. It was a very old passage between two solid brick buildings that, once upon a time, provided some protection to someone hiding from the falling bombs who did not make it to the shelter. It opened into a plaza on a cracked, gray road that was hardly used by anyone except criminals, a road that ran between complexes that kept their backs to each other like quarreling lovers. Then there was an entrance to one of the old tube stations, a stairway opening abruptly in the ground like a fissure after an earthquake. Old signs, cracked and crooked, information scrubbed out to prevent vandalism.

Susan remembered later; the tube had closed prior to the war in the thirties, but had been reopened as an air raid shelter. Ghosts might have well screamed her name from the depths beneath the city street.

A pair of gloved hands shot out from the alleyway, clutching Susan's waist and clapping a palm over her mouth, effectively cutting short a scream before she even realized she needed to. She struggled and let out muffled cries, twisting and turning like a wet cat. Whomever had her in his arms was far stronger, a giant with a solid body made of rock and arms like logs. Susan's typical English attitude of taking offense at the violation of her god-given rights soon turned to stark and utter terror, black and gleaming in her mind, when the unseen assailant dragged her down the stairs into the darkness of the abandoned Tube station.

She tripped and fell the last few stairs, plummeting out of the iron-grip of her abductor, and skinned her knee against the old, cracked pavement below. She knew she couldn't run back up the stairs and somehow avoid the man who stood there now, blocking her exit. She would have to creatively evade him in the tunnels.

She knew this old station might have another entrance, possibly the man-hole somewhere the new construction for Regis... she wasn't familiar with the turns... she'd never hid down here during an air raid. She was in Finchley during the war, and then in Professor Kirk's...

But she didn't care anymore. She was running, as fast as she could, sobs shuddering in her lungs. It did not take long to accept the dark and the grime. Like an adaptable rat, Susan found herself getting dirty, falling and touching mouldering walls and floors, scraping hands and knees on unmentionably horrific ground conditions. She only wanted to escape! She wanted to report that man for attempted kidnapping! She would make him pay for ruining her hose and shoes!

She was struck by brightness in the shadow, with only dim streams of light shining from the entrance to give her any idea as to where she was going. She remembered clearly taking three turns down the tunnels, or perhaps the tunnel was round? Did she end up right back where she started?

The bright light was from a lamppost.

What would a lamppost be doing down here? How was it even lit?

A hand was lifting a lantern down from a small, broken ticket master's podium, what Susan had thought was a lamppost. Holding the lantern was a beautiful old woman, with bright blue eyes beneath a full head of silver hair, swept into a magnificent braid of startling length.

The light of the lantern gave a glow to what used to be an old platform. Arched, tiled walls came to a close overhead, and just off to Susan's left was the edge of the platform, a few meters drop down to the train tracks in poor condition. The old woman stood by the old podium and benches against the wall, looking entirely unsurprised.

"Excuse me!" cried Susan with a gasp, her voice shaking uncontrollably. "Please-please help me! There's a man chasing me... and I..."

A pair of footsteps loped up from the tunnel, and Susan whirled around to find her kidnapper standing behind her. In the light, he did not look so frightening. He was younger than she thought, perhaps thirty, dressed like a chimney sweep from three decades ago. He was slightly breathless, but rather than try to assail Susan again, he pulled his Yorkshire cap from his head and toyed with it his hands. "B-B-Begging your p-p-pardon ma'am," he said thickly, with a stutter, "I was j-j-just supposed to g-g-get you down h... h... here."

"Stay away!" Susan tried to sound brave, backing up towards the old woman and holding out a hand. "If you come anywhere NEAR us, I will throw this lantern into your face!"

"Wait just a moment, dear!" said the old woman, holding the lantern out of her reach. "I understand that you're probably frustrated, but now is really not a time to overreact!"

"This man tried to kidnap me!" Susan cried, backing away from the old woman. Floods of distrust pushed away her feeling of relief. They were both in on this, somehow. Some crazy old lady lives in the sewers and sends her gigantic son to the surface to collect victims to sell into sex slavery... that _must_ be it!

"I d-d-didn't h-h-hurt you, did I?" the man asked, stepping forward. "Th-th-they said it w-w-w-would be fine. That once you were... here... you'd uh, uh uh, understand! That all I h-h-had to do was get you d-d-d-down here, and then you'd b-b-b-be happy!"

"What sort of rubbish is this?" Susan exclaimed, her fear shivering like a fever beneath the indignant attitude. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Well, my darling," said another voice... an American accent, soft on the _R's,_ with a Kansas flair. "You never called!"

...

...

* * *

Please review my little tea-drinkers :)


	3. Traveler's Society of Magical Wanderings

_The Tea Club_

 _a conglomerate fan fiction novel by Mya Sanders_

 _..._

There is a secret society in London called the Tea Club. The mission; to find magic in the real world and harness power to return to lands visited only by magic, and if that is impossible, find solidarity among others who have experienced magic and know it to be real. The members are Dorothy Gale, Alice Whitmore, Wendy Darling, and many more. Reeling from the death of her family in a railway accident, Susan Pevensie is the logical choice for the club's newest member.

 _..._

 _..._

* * *

 _Chapter Three_

 _The Traveler's Society of Magical Wanderings_

* * *

...

...

There was Dorothy Gale, dressed to the nines in sapphire. She emerged from the opposite side of the platform, where there was another doorway. Instead of spilling darkness, it was spilling cheerful light. Somewhere beyond the door, someone was singing cheerfully.

"You!" Susan gasped. "Is this... is this your _T Club?_ Some sort of underground gang that kidnaps helpless women?"

"You're hardly helpless," Dorothy laughed. "Especially if you can escape Hank Jr."

"Oh my dear," said the silver-haired woman, addressing Dorothy, "You most certainly did _not_ take advantage of Hank Jr.'s strength to manhandle a young lady? Will you EVER learn?"

Dorothy shrugged carelessly.

"D-d-did I do something wrong?" asked her kidnapper, presumably Hank Jr.

"You should not have listened to Dorothy," Alice said gently. "Dorothy was wrong to ask you, do you understand?"

"For your information, I am pressing charges against this _monolith!_ ," Susan cried, tears of confusion and dread pouring down her face. She wasn't _crying,_ exactly. She wasn't sure how her body was trying to react to the shock of what she thought was an abduction in progress, which now seemed like nothing of the sort.

"Please, my dear," said the old woman, touching her arm gently. "He didn't mean any harm. Let me explain, won't you?"

"There's no need to explain! If I am not being held against my will, I shall leave!"

"Do you trust yourself to find your way back, or be lost in the labyrinth?" Dorothy's eyes glinted.

"It's not a labyrinth! It's the bloody underground! There's going to be entrances and exits somewhere!"

"There are, but," Dorothy smiled, "Many are sealed. Or," she gestured to the door behind her. "You could follow me and meet your fellow club members."

"I am not following you anywhere," Susan's voice wobbled. "I want to go home!"

"Dorothy," the old woman said sternly, "You've been hanging around royalty too long. You can't just shanghai anyone you like to induct them into _our_ secret society. Go fetch me a damp towel and put the kettle on. This poor young woman is going to need a bracing cup of tea."

With an offended sort of sniff, Dorothy flounced back into the other room.

"I am not staying for TEA in your damn TEA CLUB!" Susan was backing up towards the door. Hank Jr was still blocking her way. "I-I-I will not be k-k-kidnapped. I will go home!"

Her shakiness suddenly made Hank Jr. smile. "You h-h-have speech-ch t-t-trouble t-t-too?" He asked.

This only made Susan stutter incoherently, leaning against the podium for support. When this did nothing to help, her knees gave way, and the panic of a dark tunnel finally catching up with her. She felt very weak and her hands shook. "Please let me go," she cried, even though no one held her back. "I don't feel at all well. If you aren't here to murder me then you jolly well might leave me alone!"

"Lend us your coat, Hank dear," the old woman held out her hand. Hank Jr. dutifully removed his coat from his shoulders and handed it to her. She knelt beside a trembling Susan and dropped the coat around her shoulders, tucking it in. "There, there," she said kindly. "We're not going to hurt you, my dear. Don't cry. Dorothy is a bit of a hell-raiser and likes to do things her own way. I am sure you realize we are not in the business of kidnapping young women. Dorothy figured you would never call, or show up on your own, and so she sent Hank Jr to collect you."

"Collect me!" spluttered Susan. "That's what you call this? Collecting!"

"Hank Jr. is truly harmless, and very obedient. He has never really grown up, you see. Dorothy should not have taken advantage of his desire to please. He's incredibly friendly, actually."

Susan snapped. "Perhaps next time Dorothy could try doing some of her own dirty work! If _she_ waited and _pss't_ me from a dark alley, inviting me on some sort of exploratory adventure, I might have jolly well gone on with her without being forced!"

Dorothy entered the platform again with a wet rag and a petulant expression.

"Did you hear that, you devil?" asked the old woman. "Susan says that if _you_ had been the one to _ask_ her to come downstairs, she probably would have said yes."

Dorothy handed over the rag. "No, she wouldn't. She says she would now... but she wouldn't. I practically had to beg her just to sit and have a sconce with me."

"Oh, for the love of God," Susan thundered, "It's SCONE, you _colonial imbecile!_ "

Hank Jr. let out a loud, guttural laugh. The old woman balked with shock, and Dorothy was highly offended.

"My goodness," said the woman, "You certainly have no trouble letting yourself be heard!" she, too, let out a surprised chuckle, and brushed Susan's face gently with the rag. "Come, dear," she said, "You're terribly covered in dirt. Run into a few walls, I suppose? Let me help you up... there's a good lass. We'll explain everything, I promise. I'm Alice, and I'm matron of this club." She nodded her head towards Dorothy. "The colonial imbecile is our... well, president, I suppose, as she is American. Don't worry, she and the Morgans are the only Yankees we'll surprise you with. The rest of us are English. Lean on my arm, there's a good girl. Come inside where we have a fire and tea."

Susan followed like the undead, shocked and perplexed past the state of panic and survival. She felt she'd gone into some sort of trance, following these loonies into an old station master's office, where a small fire pit warmed the center of the room, and a curious assortment of people sat around it, drinking tea and warming their palms.

She was pressed firmly into a rickety wooden chair, and a hot cup was thrust into her hands.

"Drink," Alice ordered.

"I don't just drink anything presented to me, especially when offered by strangers hiding underground," Susan found her voice, but it croaked, and her protest felt weak. Her hands were slowly being warmed, and she wouldn't release the cup.

"Well, then, dear, you're a mite smarter than me," Alice said, the wrinkles around her eyes folding into a smile.

"Half of Alice's story involves drinking things offered to her," an elderly gentleman said with a chuckle. Also an American accent.

"That's Hank Jr.'s father, Hank Morgan Sr.," said Alice.

He inclined his own cup towards her. "I assure you, it's just harmless English tea. Cheers."

"And half of Hank's story is about telling lies," said another woman, with a cheerful, warm voice. Her voice was younger than her years, which seemed to be in her late forties. Soft brown curls framed a round face, and bright blue eyes that sparkled with both mischief and sorrow.

"Stories," corrected Hank Sr, "I tell good stories. Many of them are believed. Most of them are true. I would think you of all people would understand."

The woman turned away from him with a smirk, facing Susan and giving her a motherly expression. The sadness remained in her eyes, a sign of recent loss, perhaps one like her own. "It is my absolute pleasure to meet you at last, Susan Pevensie," she said. "My name is Wendy."

"Well, now, don't leave her in the cold," Alice urged. "It's a matter of induction to be properly introduced to you."

Wendy rolled her eyes. "Oh, rubbish. My full name is Wendy Moira Angela Darling-Frances."

Susan stared at her over the steam of her cup of wasted tea. _That's a mouthful,_ she thought. Instead, she said, "How did you know my name?"

"We know plenty about you," Wendy declared. "I'd recognize you anywhere."

Susan looked around the room, noting an old cork-board on one wall that had postings from since before the war. Green paint peeled from the upper half of the walls, and the lower half was covered in alternating brown and yellow tiles. The counter from which they used to sell tickets was dusty, but held a basket of wrapped goods and small ceramic teacups; an indoor picnic. The glass from the ticketmaster window was missing. A large, nondescript painting of lilies hung on a wall beside a waiting bench. A small sign pointed down a hallway for a public loo.

"Why?" Susan asked. "I've never met you."

"Well, we've heard so much about you," Wendy said, confusedly. "From Peter and Lucy."

"And Edmund, if he thought of _gracing_ us with his presence," Dorothy said sarcastically, pouring herself a cup of tea from the same kettle. She sipped it instantly, and cringed when she burnt her tongue.

Susan noted that the tea probably wasn't drugged, and she was not in any danger of being sold to foreign brothels. Her reaction may have even taken a turn for the pleasant if two complete strangers hadn't just mentioned the names of her deceased siblings.

"But... how..." Susan couldn't bare to say their names, not now. Not without being in the sacred protection of a locked bedroom where she could cry at will.

"Don't you remember?" Dorothy asked. "I said Peter Pevensie was once a member of our little club, didn't I?"

"All in good time," said Wendy. "First things first." She looked at Alice pointedly, ready to move forward with... whatever it is these people did.

"I think it's safe to say we're ready to begin the real introductions," Alice said, brushing her silver braid over her shoulder and sitting straighter, despite her back desperately aching to hunch. She glanced toward the back of the room. "Jane! We're waiting on you!"

"No Albert again today?" Hank Sr. asked.

The woman next to him, obviously related to both Hanks in some way due to the remarkable similar features, pinched her mouth disapprovingly. "Albert telephoned Hank Jr. this morning to tell him he would be absent again today."

Hank Jr. nodded emphatically. He elbowed the woman and made a gesture, as if to say, _Go on! Tell them the rest!_

 _Siblings,_ Susan thought, with a jealousy that nearly smote her in two like a fork of lightening. She would know that silent communication ability anywhere.

"Furthermore," the sister Morgan continued, "He said to Hank Jr. that if we would please pass along a message to Queen Dorothy that he is _not_ traveling with the amulet, it would be greatly appreciated."

Dorothy tapped a spoon in her cup loudly. "I didn't think anything of the sort. What a little shrew."

The sister seemed to take this personally, and shriveled up inside herself, recoiling as if Dorothy might strike her.

"I don't mean you, Pauline _dear,"_ Dorothy added tiredly, as if she constantly had to remind Pauline Morgan that no one meant her, ever. "Albert takes great pains to pick on me."

"To be fair," said Wendy, "You did accuse him of secretly using the amulet to travel between realms and not invite you along."

Dorothy shrugged unapologetically. "His grandfather leaves him a _magical_ amulet that can transport a person anywhere, and Albert just _happens_ to not know how to use it, but also disappears for several days on end? It's mighty suspicious."

"A magical amulet?" Susan interjected, unable to simply observe any longer. "What in god's name are you talking about?"

"JANE!" Wendy called again, turning in her seat. "We've waited long enough!"

A younger woman, about Susan's age, stepped out of the hallway that contained the door to the loo. She was several months pregnant, and looking every moment of it. Her face was thin and pale, rather sickly, in Susan's opinion. She had wide blue eyes like Wendy, an A-line bob that looked both terribly modern and yet horribly vintage, circa 1925.

"I refuse to apologize for morning sickness," Jane said gloomily. "hand me a cup of that tea, won't you, Mother?"

Wendy jumped to her feet to obey Jane's wish. "Sorry, my dearest. I didn't realize you were feeling poorly."

Jane slumped into the seat beside Wendy's, a hand protectively hovering over her large belly. Her eyes narrowed at Susan. "You must be Susan Pevensie," she said, her eyes unapologetically looking her up and down. "Eyes like Peter, lips like Edmund, nose like Lucy. Beautiful family."

"Please," Susan managed to whisper hoarsely, "Don't... I can't hear this. Not now. If you haven't anything to discuss other than my deceased family, please... I should go. I _should_ go!" she set her untouched tea cup down on the floor by her feet and stood up.

"Oh, please, we're only just getting started," Alice pleaded. Her face looked so apologetic that Susan actually felt guilty for wanting to leave, as if Alice were an ordinary hostess and this were an ordinary tea club. "I do hope your natural curiosity will overcome our rudeness. Give us a chance. We understand you are in considerable pain from your loss. We won't bring it up again until _you_ have questions for _us._ Please sit down?"

Susan lowered herself down, her _natural_ curiosity winning out over her desire to be alone, in her own flat, nursing a stronger drink than tea. Whiskey, perhaps.

What could all these people possibly have in common?

"To start our meeting, a letter from our first founder, read by me," Dorothy opened a large black-paged album, meant for pasting cards or photographs in. There was a single letter stuck to the first page, dark yellow and crinkled with age.

"Not again," Pauline sighed.

"For _her_ benefit," Hank Sr. patted his daughter's knee, with a look at Susan.

"Ahem," said Dorothy, "The letter is as follows - I, Marie Stahlbaum, do hereby write my last testament, in December of 1907. I am an old woman now, ever so much more than eighty! I believe it is a reasonable time as any to make my beliefs public.

My children and great-grandchildren know of an adventure I had as a child in 1816, when my toy nutcracker came to life and lead me into a magical land. I am not writing this to recall the entire tale, as my son is doing a better job of recording it than I, please look for a published volume later this year... But I am writing this to remind any and all who shall read it - I am not mad. And there are those of you who may believe you are mad, or others tell you you are, but you're not.

There are magical lands out there. Other places, alternate realities, that one can only travel to by magic. I myself have been to the Christmas Wood, Gingerbreadville, the Marchpane castle, hand in hand with a Nutcracker who was a Prince in an enchantment. Magic is real, and shall always be real.

I know there are other Travelers who will earn their marks, a small dark shape like bruise on the inner wrist. This is not some fancy I created to explain away a childhood dream, and a birthmark. I have met another young Traveler named Cyril who, with his sisters Anthea, Jane, and Hillary and brother Robert, met a sand fairy called a Psammead, and not only did the sand-fairy make many wishes come true, they were later possessors of a magical amulet that can transport one from place to place. They've gifted the amulet to the historian and Egyptologist, James, who I am sure will put it to good use. He, too, has earned the Traveler's mark. I've been to tea with Cyril's mother, and she assures me all of her children bear the mark on the wrist. I shall entrust the letter to their friend James, as the record should rest with a historian who will make sure those that need these words shall receive them duly.

Why do I tell you all of this? A reminder, and a promise. You are not mad. I am not mad. We are made anew by magic, and made all the better for it. There are other worlds out there! Some we can only access as children. Sometimes we will spend our entire lives trying to go back. Maybe it is impossible, maybe it isn't. Do not waste the life you have on earth searching for the Other Place, but do not believe for a moment that it didn't happen and you imagined the whole thing. Raise your right hand and promise to be obedient to the lessons you learned in your Magical Land, and share what you may have learned with others. We are all humble servants to the pull of magic in another reality, casting a great shadow over the mundane, much like a Lion gazing from a high, hidden place, and as we graze the fields below.

I sincerely hope there are more out there like me, in fact I do not hope, I know! For those like me, who perhaps came before, or will come after, I am with you in spirit. Humbly yours, Marie Stahlbaum."

First, there was a respectful silence from the Tea Club.

Then, Susan let out a sharp little laugh. She was about to open her mouth and berate this "supposed" letter, when she noticed the serious looks on all those seated around the fire. They were gazing at her with an air of expectancy.

"What?" she exclaimed. "Surely you don't believe in this nonsense."

It was obvious by their expressions that they, so obviously, did.

"Oh my god," Susan said with growing dread. "You _do._ That's why you meet underground. You believe in magic. You're just as daft as... as..." she couldn't bring herself to speak ill of the dead. She knew her siblings had some very interesting _beliefs,_ things that seemed more the symptom of an insane person than it did of her own beloved family.

"Daft as Peter? Edmund, and Lucy?" Jane said skeptically. "Interesting for only _one_ of the four to be so... grounded."

Susan's lip trembled. "Stop saying their names. I can't bear it."

"Let's move on, shall we?" Dorothy interrupted brightly. "As is tradition, please raise your right hand."

Everyone raised their right hand. Dorothy pulled down her bright blue sleeve to reveal a small bruise on her inner wrist that matched Susan's supposed birthmark exactly. Wendy, Jane, Hank Sr., and Alice all matched the same motion... they each pulled a sleeve down, revealing a matching birthmark.

Hank Jr. and Pauline looked on with some bemusement, neither of them looked left out or disturbed by this ritual.

"Impossible," gasped Susan. She tugged on her own sleeve until the same mark was revealed. Pauline leaned over and gave it a good look.

"Yes, indeed," she said through pursed lips, "Same as the rest of you. I know you don't want to hear this, but," she fixed Susan with a stern, schoolmarm gaze. "Your siblings had the same marks."

Susan didn't know what to say. Instead, she looked to Alice, who seemed to be the most level-headed of the group. "Please explain to me what is going on," she said in a low voice, nearly crying again. "I can't stand it any longer!"

"See? Curiosity is key!" Alice fairly beamed. "Why don't we introduce ourselves and our stories, beginning with our eldest. And that is me."

"We should begin with the prettiest," Hank Sr. said, with a crinkling grin, "So, also you."

Alice waved him off. "My name is Alice Whitmore. When I was seven years old, I was sitting by my sister in the park. I spied a white rabbit in the distance and felt compelled to follow it. I ended up falling down a rabbit hole and ended up in a world called Wonderland, where everyone speaks in nonsense and riddles. I met a person called the Mad Hatter who became one of my dearest friends in all the world, and outwitted the Queen of Hearts... you know, I could go on and on. I am ninety-one years of age and I certainly can ramble. Best to go straight to my second adventure, when I went through the looking glass. This time in another part of Wonderland where there was a giant game of chess, and the jabberwocky, and my dear white knight and another dear friend. The Red and White Queens battling for the throne! Oh, such adventures!" Alice had a far-away look in her eye. "I was never able to return again. How I tried! I slammed my forehead against every mirror and plunged down every hole. I've never found it again." She pressed a hand to her heart. "It left a gaping hole in my heart."

Susan was still having a hard time grasping the fact that Alice was 91 years old. She didn't seem to be suffering from memory loss or a glaringly obvious physical ailment. She walked and talked like a young girl, only the plethora of wrinkles adorning her paper-thin skin seemed to hint advanced age. But obviously, believing in a magical place called Wonderland, the woman must be senile.

"My turn, then," Hank Sr. smiled tenderly at Alice. He looked very much like he knew how to fill a gaping hole in her heart. "My name is Hank Morgan. My story is pretty simple. I managed to find myself in ancient Camelot, and I used my knowledge of the future to make all those folks believe I was a great wizard... like Merlin! I guess you could say I mucked up my chance to do some real, decent good in an alternate reality. Instead I was like a con man. _But,"_ he patted Hank Jr. and Pauline's knees. "These here are the joys of my life, Hank Jr. and Pauline, who take care of their old man... I'm nearing ninety, myself... and make me feel as if I am not an entire failure."

"Y-y-y-you're n-n-n-not a failur-r-re," Hank Jr. patted his father's arm.

"They've never been to another world, or went back in history by magic," said Hank Sr., "but they've been my most fervent supporters. When their mother left me, they stayed by my side. I am the luckiest man in the world."

"My turn!" Dorothy declared with enthusiasm.

Susan noticed with some confusion that Dorothy spoke next. Wendy was clearly older, having a full-grown daughter of her own. Jane, Susan, and Dorothy all seemed to be in the same age group.

"In the turn of the century, 1900, I was twelve years old," Dorothy said directly to Susan, as if expecting the confusion and maybe even a challenge. "I was caught up in a tornado that dropped me and my house into the land of Oz. Not only did my house land on a witch, but she had enslaved the munchkins, so when she died they gave me her slippers. Magic slippers that, eventually, became my key home. The land of Oz is far more complicated than I have time to discuss here, a land ruled by witches and wizards and scarecrows and so many different countries within that I cannot remember them all. I went back many times and made many friends. I brought my Aunt and Uncle to come and live with me there... who would want to stay in this dreary world when you have another like Oz? Well, anyhow, during the great war between the Skeezers and the Flatheads, Princess Ozma and I summoned Glinda to help us defeat them. During the victory feast, I remember eating and drinking and dancing, and suddenly I was waking up in the wreckage from a tornado... back in Kansas! But it was not the tornado that brought me originally to Oz in 1912. This tornado occurred August 25th, 1939."

Susan looked at Dorothy with a fierce expression. Dorothy glared right back, and said with a prideful smile, "Oz prevented my aging. Back with Princess Ozma, I still looked like the same twelve-year-old I had always been... but that changed when I got back to Kansas. When I was found in the tornado's mess, I was treated like a child, but I was so much older! I began to age again, almost instantly, with a sudden bout of growing pains!"

"How old are you?" Susan asked, unwilling to do the math in her head.

"I am sixty-one," Dorothy said, thrilled that people were still asking. "And I reckon I look fabulous for my age."

Susan snorted. They were all having a go at her. Dorothy looked twenty-two, not anywhere near sixty, much less forty. Almost immediately, she knew exactly what she would do. She would call some of her friends in America, from her stay there as a teenager, and ask them what they know about survivors from a terrible 1939 tornado.

Dorothy was waiting for Susan's argument. She was practically jittery with excitement for it.

But Susan did not rise to the bait. She decided to simply do some fact-checking and leave it at that. Instead, she smiled demurely at Dorthy and shrugged.

Dorothy sat back in her seat with disappointment. "Next?"

Wendy cleared her throat. "When I was ten years old, a boy flew to my nursery window. He from from an island called Neverland, where you never grow old, and there are pirates and natives, crocodiles and fairies, lost boys and mermaids trapped in a sort of purgatory where you cannot age. His name is Peter Pan, and he's the... well, I don't know. He calls himself Captain. I think he was the first lost boy. He lives there, you know. And he only comes to the nursery window when he remembers... he has terrible memory loss."

"This _island,"_ Susan interjected. "Where is it?"

"In the sky," Wendy said solemnly. "You have to follow the brightest star in the sky; second to the right and straight on till morning."

"Of course you do," Susan grumbled.

"Peter is immortal," Wendy went on. "He and Neverland are connected somehow. The others may leave... but... Peter Pan does not want to grow up. So he stays. Some of the others, though, they came away with us, and my father adopted them. I returned to Neverland several springs in a row to help with Peter's spring cleaning, and when Jane was young..."

"Don't tell my story," Jane pleaded.

"Right, sorry, darling. As you all know, many of the lost boys returned from Neverland with us, and my brothers, but they are not here in these meetings because they are not believers anymore." She cast a poignant look at Susan. "It's difficult without the support of family. But I am so pleased that we've, at last, had one nonbeliever join us."

"I think it's safe to say I was forced," Susan said crisply.

"Maybe," Wendy shrugged, "I would give anything to have my brothers here. Or the rest of the lost boys. But, alas, when I was young, all I wanted was for them to come home with me and let me take care of them as they grew up. And grow up they did! One is an accountant... I forget which... Tootles became a Judge! Or was it Slightly?"

"Your memory isn't too good, either," Jane said gently.

"John and Michael, my dear brothers," Wendy said. "I love them with my whole heart. Michael was the last to stop believing in Peter Pan and Neverland. _Fancy!_ he said to me. _Just fancy that, sister! That you still remember the stories we used to tell as children in that old nursery!"_

With a jolt, Susan remembered what she had said to her own sister; _Funny, you still thinking all those funny games we used to play as children._

"Why don't you take over," Wendy said.

"In 1940, when I was ten years old," Jane recalled, "Peter Pan came to my window looking for my mother. He was horrified that mother had grown up! But I was a smug little thing and told him I would do his spring cleaning for him... in that little house that the Lost Boys built for mother all those years ago. I went and I had such grand adventures. When I was kidnapped by pirates..."

Wendy shuddered. "I can't believe you didn't tell me about that until you were grown-up."

"I knew you wouldn't allow me to go again!" Jane protested. "Peter Pan rescued me. On our third or fourth adventure, he fought old Blackbeard, who took over the Jolly Rodger in the wake of Captain Hook's sudden... disappearance..."

"Down the throat of the crocodile," Wendy filled in.

"I don't really know how Neverland works, exactly," Jane said, "One might never grow up, but one could certainly be injured, and one can most definitely _die._ Peter Pan almost died from that fight... I was fourteen, at the time, and had gone to enough Red-Cross meetings to know how to nurse him back to health."

"You saved his life," Wendy said proudly.

"I visited many springs, sometimes he came for me in the fall but he thought it was spring." She heaved a little sigh. "We had so many adventures, and," she patted her belly with a little smile, "Now they will continue. I do hope I have a girl! Peter likes to bring a girl to Neverland for the storytelling, and to help with cleaning. A bit of a sexist prick, now that I think about it. But he's a young, and a hopeless romantic, too. Someday I am sure he'll meet a girl who will pledge to stay in Neverland by his side forever. So far, all of his girls have been too practical for that! But, of course, if I have a boy, Peter Pan _may_ not come back. I'll have to live with that."

"What a strange story," Susan hummed. "This flying fairy-boy's preference for stealing young girls from their beds is... uncomfortable, to say the least."

"That's the best time for when the grown-ups are away," Jane said with a shrug.

"Tell Susan how you met Peter," Dorothy said suddenly.

"She just did," Susan replied tiredly.

"No, not Peter Pan," said Dorothy, with a wicked smile, "Peter Pevensie."

Susan, at last, picked up her tea cup. "Since you lot insist on making this the most painful and _rude_ tea party I have ever attended in my _life,"_ she said, handing her tea cup to Dorothy. "The least you can do is top this off."

Dorothy accepted the cup with a triumphant smile, flounced to the kettle, and poured a fresh, steaming stream of tea into the cup, filling it to the brim. She handed it to Susan and said, "Enjoy."

Susan didn't bother to say thank-you.

"Well," Jane said, with a shift in her seat, "As all of you traveler's know, you spend a majority of time in the Real World, listening and watching for hints that somehow, someway, something magical will happen again. I was at Oxford one day visiting Uncle Michael when I heard someone shouting _Peter P! Peter P!_ Instantly I found myself rushing across the plaza and approached a young man. A student was asking him for particulars of a recent exam, and I interrupted, having walked right into their conversation circle... terribly awkward!

"Anyhow, the young man looked at me and said, 'Can I help you?' and I replied, 'What's your last name?' and he said 'Pevensie', and I said, 'Oh, then, you're not the right Peter P. Sorry to interrupt.' You see," she said to Susan, "I hoped Peter Pan had come to England and grew up after all, and chance had thrown us into the same place at the same time."

"Peter Pan will never leave Neverland," Wendy said wholeheartedly.

"Yes, Mother, I _know_ ," Jane snapped. "Anyhow, the other student says, 'See you later, Pete,' and practically dashes away, leaving Peter Pevensie and I staring at each other awkwardly. 'So I am not the right Peter?' he asked. 'That's right,' I replied, 'You're the wrong Peter.' Then he smiled and said, 'I don't _have_ to be!' And the next thing I know, we're getting drinks at the Fox, and we're going steady." She glanced shyly at Susan.

Susan gazed back at her, quizzically. It's only natural boys and girls date. She was not sure why Jane was gauging her for her reaction.

"Before I know it, I'm meeting his sister and his brother at a dinner party," Jane continues when Susan offers no questions, "and Lucy quizzes me about my belief in magic, until we finally had it all hammered out... Lucy and I both believe in magic, and magical places. Oh, the relief that I felt when someone _other_ than my mother knew about magic! Lucy told me all about the Pevensie's adventures in Narnia... going through the wardrobe... the first time, and meeting a faun carrying parcels in a snowy wood."

Susan sipped her tea, silently. _Those adventures weren't real,_ she thought sadly. _Lucy made a fool of herself._

"I told Lucy I was afraid Peter might dump me for having belief in magic," Jane continued, with a soft smile. "But then she told me the _wonderful_ news. Edmund and Peter did not forget Narnia, not like my mother's brother's forgot Neverland. John and Michael do not remember a whit about Peter Pan. Peter Pevensie remembers what it is like to explore an enchanted realm, and even rule it. He was not going to dump me for having childish beliefs. In fact, it was important to him that we _could_ both... know... m-m-magic was real..." Suddenly, she was crying.

"Whatever is the matter with her?" Susan said impatiently.

"Give her a minute," Alice said strictly, with a sharp glance at Susan. Susan found herself having an unexpected respect for Alice, and she found herself obeying her hint. She remained quiet until Jane composed herself.

"Peter and I stayed up for a whole night," Jane said with a sob, accepting a hanky offered by Hank Jr. "Talking of Narnia and Neverland. I told him my short story, and he elaborated on Lucy's tale. How he, and his siblings, followed Lucy through the wardrobe a second time... and he told me about the White Witch, the curse, Prince Caspian, the battles and the Beavers... and about Aslan." Jane gave Susan a look.

Susan felt her stomach drop. Hearing the name Aslan was like being hit by a lead pipe, like hearing good news, and also hearing bad news... something inside her was filled with a regret she couldn't fathom, immeasurable sadness, and a stiffness that reminded her a scripture; _and God hardened Pharaoh's heart._

Her heart was hardened against her siblings and their beliefs, she knew that now. That didn't necessarily make them true; but she, at last, recognized how cruel she had been. The least she could have done was play along and try to make them happy. She could have been encouraging. Maybe once in awhile, she could have said to Lucy, "You know I don't believe in Narnia as you do, but, please tell me what you're thinking about it lately. If it is important to you, it shall be important to me."

But the times have passed and the words are unsaid. It's too late to fix it now... too late to know how to best treat her family in the wake of their imaginations run amok. She could have been nicer. She could have let go of her foolish, idle pursuits, of make up and meeting boys, drinking and partying. She could have paid attention to the lives of Peter, Edmund, and Lucy... no matter how silly they were!

Susan could not bring herself to repeat Aslan's name. It was forbidden to her, a corked bottle of ambrosia placed high on a cupboard shelf out of reach. Not for the sinners to taste.

"We met Dorothy not long after," Wendy interjected, seeing that the silence would become awkward unless someone older and wiser carried it along.

"I placed an ad in the paper, asking for others with similar experiences as mine, when I moved to England," Dorothy said. "Alice and Wendy answered, and we began to have meetings. We've kept them secret because... well, I mean, you just never know what sort might overhear in a cafe and try to disrupt what we have, or steal that valuable amulet of Albert's."

"What is this amulet you keep going on about?" Susan sighed, pretending it was annoyance, but it was relief. Anything to change the subject from a magical, Christ-like lion from a fairy story that; to Susan's knowledge; had a reputation of breaking hearts and pretending it was for the greater good.

"Like our first founder said in her letter," Dorothy explained, "She met the eldest son of a family of five that had many magical experiences. They found an amulet on their travels, and bestowed it to James, or, Jimmy as they knew him, an Egyptologist. One of the girls from the family of five, Anthea, married Jim's nephew. Jimmy was all too happy to keep the amulet in the family, and return the favor from the children all those years ago! When he grew too old to travel, he passed it on to Anthea and Jim's son, Albert. Albert answered the ad, too, thinking the amulet might help us all find where we needed to go."

Susan cocked an eyebrow. "And this amulet helped?"

"Not a bit," Dorothy said angrily. "It didn't do a bloody thing."

"Please, language, my dear," Alice said primly.

"Bloody is not a rude word in America, I'm just borrowing it," Dorothy whined. "Anyhow, Albert is absent from meetings a lot. I think he uses the amulet to go on his own adventures."

"We all tried to the use the amulet," Wendy reminded her gently, "And it didn't work."

"I don't _have_ to use the amulet," Jane said to Susan. "Our type of magic doesn't involve portals through wardrobes or paintings... you know your cousin Eustace and his friend Jill would have joined the club if they were living in town. They sent us letters once in awhile, instead. Lucy would bring them to meetings and read them out loud, telling us all the latest."

"Eustace truly believed in Narnia?" Susan found herself asking. She sort of realized Eustace was a changed boy, no longer a bully at his school, but she hand't fully realized he had gone mental too. She supposed it made sense now why so many people, distant relatives and friends-of-friends had been killed in that damn railway accident. They were in their _own_ little club of sorts, a Narnian club. Jill had played along with Lucy because she was _Jill._ She bullied Susan about being an "old queen" because she liked to cause a row. Or at least that's what Susan thought. They all mucked up together and had some sort of glorious Narnian adventure together, until it landed them all on the same platform, waiting for a train that bore their teammates, hurtling towards them at an impossible speed and unable to stop properly.

"Of course they did," Jane nodded. "You're the only one who _didn't."_ She touched her belly again. "And when she is born, I'm going to make _sure_ she believes in both Neverland AND Narnia."

Realization dawned on Susan. Peter was Jane's beau. Peter passed away very _recently._ And Jane was pregnant.

"Oh my GOD!" she shouted, jumping to her feet and pointing an accusing finger at Jane. "That's what all this was about! YOU WERE SHAGGING HIM, WEREN'T YOU?"

"Oh, dear, don't be vulgar," Alice exclaimed.

"SHAGGING isn't the term I would use!" Jane leapt to her feet as best as she could with the extra weight of Peter Pevensie's child. "Peter and I... our relationship... it moved very fast, I admit. We were so relieved to have found someone we could completely be ourselves with... no hiding. We didn't even have to pretend we didn't believe in magic. It made us feel very passionate about each other."

"I think that's enough detail," Wendy chided. "Girls, please sit down!"

Hank Jr. was chuckling to himself. His father elbowed him discreetly.

"Did you LOVE him?" Susan demanded. "Were you in love with my brother?"

Jane looked at Susan with an honest expression. "Yes," she said softly. "We moved too quickly... we made love and laughed together and had wonderful times, and, I mean," she glanced with embarrassment at her mother.

Alice made a _tsk_ sound.

"Before we knew what was happening," Jane went on, "I was expecting and he was dead before we'd even had a conversation about _what_ we were to each other, much less a conversation where we discussed a future. I don't know if we ever said the words _I love you._ I would give anything to remember if we did. But I know it was true, even if we didn't say it. I loved Peter Pevensie."

Susan sat down, her knees giving way. She was trying to think, and found that she couldn't.

"You're going to be an aunt," Alice said gently. "There is a little joy in the midst of your sorrows, Susan Pevensie. There is a light in the darkness. I wanted you to know this. Dorothy did, too. We wanted you to know. We wanted you to be happy for your brother. He would have made a wonderful father."

Susan felt completely hollowed out. They took a chisel and they had carved away at everything she thought, everything she believed, until she realized that she was sitting in an underground room with a bunch of people who all believed in the _same madness_ as her siblings. That made her outvoted, outmanned. And she was sitting across from the young woman who was carrying Peter's child.

She stood up for the third, and final, time. "Peter was an honorable man," she whispered, raking her fingers across one cheek to wipe a sudden pouring of silent tears. "Peter dreamed of a future, of marriage and children. He wouldn't just _sleep_ with anyone unless he had the purest of intentions. Make no mistake, _Jane,"_ Susan said her name with some bitterness. "You may not have known how you felt about my brother until it was too late, but he knew exactly how he felt about _you._ He wouldn't have touched you unless he was completely in love with you, devoted to you, promising himself to you until the end of the world itself. Do not question those intentions. It would be horribly cruel, a discredit to his honor. He would have married you. He... he would have made you very happy." Susan broke off with a sob.

Jane pushed herself to her feet, and for a moment, Susan thought she might hit her. But Jane came to Susan's side and wrapped her arms around her, and held her, like a long-lost sister.

Susan allowed herself to be held, and she cried.

"Thank-you," Jane whispered. "I trust you knew your brother better than anyone. If you say so, then I know it to be true. You've made my heart happier than its been in weeks. I could only wonder..."

"I should go," Susan repeated for the last time. She gently moved out of Jane's arms and set her tea cup down on the chair. She moved towards the door, and glanced briefly back at Alice. "I have to go," she said again. "I can't bear this any longer."

No one moved to stop her as she left the ticket master's room, and went into the dimly-lit tube. Light glinted on the tracks, and the opening yawned darkly before her. She went without hesitation into the blackness, and when he eyes adjusted, she followed the tunnel back to the stairs.

When she emerged into the daylight, she felt as if she were coming back to England from Narnia. She was forever changed. One hour amongst them felt like eternity, and she'd reached the beginning of the end.

The sun glimmered, and a bird chirped.

Susan shaded her eyes against the sky, and felt empty, devoid of thought. There was nothing left after her sorrows, her disappointments, and her grief.

She was an empty vessel waiting to be filled up again.

...

...

* * *

...

...

Please review and let me know what you think!


	4. Susan Has a Secret

_Chapter Four_

 _Susan Has a Secret_

* * *

A week marched by with unhurried solemnity, and Susan spent sleepless nights in the boarding house, and days at the switchboard with growing anxiousness. There were only three things on her mind; and that was first, there was some part of her elder brother that lived on. A child that would be brave and beautiful born to a deluded woman who believed in magic. Secondly, this deluded woman belonged to a cult that all built a foundation upon the same madness. Thirdly; were they really insane? Or just misguided?

Misguided was something that Susan could handle. She handled it well enough with her own family, the way some polite agnostics might have a brother or a sister who were religious zealots. Differences could be ignored for the sake of being actively part of her niece or nephew's life. For all the charades, Jane owed her a little involvement. Susan couldn't bear to be left out of it. Imagine if she were to ignore Jane Frances and her mother, Wendy Moira Angelica Maggie Petra Pie or whatever-her-name-was, and forcibly exclude them from any part of her life, then she finds herself walking down the road one day to see a child, age, ten, with Peter's eyes and mouth. A rude shock it would be!

The only problem was pride. Susan was too proud to get on her hands and knees and search her room for the T club card that Dorothy had given her. Even if she _did_ find the card with the telephone number, she wouldn't want to speak to Dorothy. That American maniac thought it would be simpler and more convenient to make Susan think she was being kidnapped and dragged underground by a tall, strong man, than it was to pester her in person with invitations. Susan was British, for god's sake, she could handle _invitations._

Novels. That had to be the answer. Dorothy read too many novels and believed so diligently in adventures that if there was nothing exciting going on, she might endanger someone's life to create her own intrigue. Maybe Dorothy really, truly believed that she had been to a magical country called Oz and was best friends with a fairy princess. She had the intelligence capacity for it.

...

Susan called one of her parent's friends from America, an old colleague of her father's that hosted plenty of parties and war bond events while she had stayed there.

"Hello, Archie?" she said airily. "It's Susan Pevensie."

"My god! Hello, Susan Pevensie! I am so sorry I haven't been to... to pay my respects and express my condolences. I didn't want to bother you at the funeral service. How... how are you?"

"I am doing as well as can be expected. I actually called with a favor to ask."

"Ask anything! I think I already know why you're calling, though..."

"...Really?"

"You'd like to come back to the States with Martha and I, wouldn't you? We had such a gay time, you know, hosting you and your... parents... my, those were the good times, weren't they? We can do it again if you like, maybe even talk about citizenship. You could stay with us as long as you liked."

"Oh, Archie, how incredibly kind and thoughtful of you," Susan was touched. They were really only casual acquaintance, but she knew Archie and Martha adored her parents. They were probably their closest friends.

"Martha would be thrilled... thrilled, you know. You haven't met our son yet... he was off in France while were were stateside... but he's coming home, and you too can meet and get to know one another..."

Susan had a feeling that they wanted to see her marry their son, and then settle down far away from England and try to find happiness again.

It was a tempting offer.

"Archie," she said gently, "The idea alone makes me want to forget everything in the world and do exactly as you say. It would be splendid! But all too easy and abrupt. I have many things have to settle here, and a promotion available as the head of switchboard training for several hotels. It would be foolish to abandon them now, and far too much to ask of you and Martha. But I thank you nevertheless from the bottom of my heart."

"Well, if there is anything else I can do for you? What about that favor?"

"I wouldn't even know where to begin looking for an answer to an extremely trivial question that's been burning me alive. I've heard from an old friend about a devastating tornado or two that took place between 1900 and 1940 in Kansas, America. There was one in particular on August 25th, 1939. I would like to know about any survivors. Even be allowed to contact them, if I could. It's a silly little research project I have, something to pass the time."

"Well, well," Archie chuckled. "Silly is as silly does. I myself have been wondering for the past nine years whether or not Hitler combed that mustache of his with a tiny doll's comb or just used his fingers, but not a single lad coming back from Germany has been able to tell me. But at least I can do something about _your_ burning question, whereas I may never have an answer to mine."

"You'll help me, then?"

"We sail out in a week. I'll call up my friend Tom... he's from Kansas, you know... and have him dig out the newspapers. Someone always saves a bold headline from a natural disaster in their state."

"It would mean more to me than I can ever say," Susan replied. "And Archie... thank you, again. For your offer. Someday I might come back to America and start anew if these things don't come through."

"Keep Martha and I in mind, we'd love to have you."

"You're a dear. And do send Martha my love."

"You can count on it. I'll send a wire or a letter sometime next month with an answer for you."

"You won't forget?"

"I have a memory like an elephant. I too shall be eaten alive with curiosity until we find out if there were survivors to a 1939 tornado on August 25th."

 _Curiosity is key,_ thought Susan ruefully. "Goodbye, then, Archie, and a thousand thanks."

"Take care of yourself, Miss Pevensie. Again I am so dreadfully sorry for your loss. May God Bless you."

Susan felt a little badly for omitting the truth from Archie, who never did a dishonest thing in his life, but she was practically laying the groundwork for catching someone... Dorothy... in a lie. It was a necessary step, for her own sake and peace of mind. Its best to proceed with caution when proving someone insane.

...

That night, Susan drank too much, and she found herself crying over Finchley.

While she was sitting upright in bed reading a magazine, the chamber was warmly hued from lit candles, dark red pillows, and umber toned walls. The cheer did nothing to prevent a sudden onslaught of grief that came upon her so suddenly she nearly threw up.

She threw the magazine aside, pressed her face to a pillow, and surrendered to the pull of darkness.

She missed the little house, the garden, and the door to the bomb shelter. She missed the picture of her parents that Lucy kept on her nightstand, and the tiny garret. She missed the milk on the porch in the dark mornings. She missed it when Eustace and the Scrubbs came for family holidays, and how uncomfortable it always was, being progressive and vegetarian amongst the conservative carnivores. She missed the way Edmund had carried a photo of their Dad with shattered glass to the shelter on one of the many nights of air raids. And then she was missing old Professor Kirk's house, with the gables and long hallways, the games of hide and seek and exploration trips that took them all day.

She missed the woods, playing games and dressing up as kings and queens having plenty of fun with nothing denied their imaginations. She remembered the times they had to run from the Macready when she brought visitors to show off the house. She remembered hiding in Spare Oom... er, the spare _room_...

Suddenly another image flooded her mind's eye... not a memory, certainly, unless it was a scene from Lucy's fairy tales. It was herself, and Lucy, dressed in long dresses and warm capes, standing over a hillside. They were crouched down behind some rocks, watching a scene unfold in the clearing below. On the rocks in the little valley, there were creatures of all manner and shape and size, howling and grunting and growling. Lying in the center of them all was a great Lion, tied and bound, with bundles of mane shorn off lying in sheaves all around him. A great woman stood over him, dressed in some sort of ceremonial garment, carrying a knife high in her hand.

Susan stirred uncomfortably, the night air was cold and Lucy was too young to see anything this violent. But nothing she would say, or do, could change what was about to happen.

"You know, Aslan," said the woman, who was clearly some sort of Queen... or a Witch. "You know whenever someone stops believing in you, they don't think it causes any harm. They think they are just letting you go gently." Suddenly the witch looked up into the dark cliffside, spying Susan hiding among the rocks. In the torchlight of the night, her eyes glinted black, like oil. "But they're not letting go of anything. They are gaining so much more. They are _exchanging_ you... for me." She held the knife higher. "And once I have you, I will do anything to keep you from going home."

Then she dropped with such force that the knife was plunged into the heart of the Lion, and Susan was lunging out of her bed with a horrified scream.

Her room was dark, the candles snuffed out. Blue moonlight was gliding through the window in cold, poetic prose. Everything that was warm and comforting before now looked frightening. The deep pillows looked like empty holes, the shadows may have been women dressed in black staring at her with hungry eyes. Smoke tendrils came whiffling softly from the wicks, and a breeze flirted with the curtains from a gap in the glass.

Susan ignored the candles and turned on the lamp, then she fell to the floor, hugging her knees and pressing her back against the closed door. She thought the witch from her dream might be in the hall, a light footfall on a creaking floorboard. She might come to her door, and test the doorknob with long, white fingers.

"Susan?" she might whisper. "I've come for you. Pay for them with your blood on the stone table."

Susan bit her sleeve, and rocked back and forth.

"Susan?"

"No, no, no, I won't come with you, I didn't _choose_ you, I mean... I didn't _know_ I was choosing you!" Susan cried.

"SUSAN THE GENTLE!" the voice mocked. "You are _mine_!"

...

Susan was waking up for a second time, the room broken from the spell. It was warm again and the candles were lit, and she was curled up against the red pillows with a half-read magazine partially stuck to her face.

The birthmark on her wrist almost looked a little more pronounced. It was more star-shaped that it was T shaped, there were five elongated points to it's entirety, not three. But was it like that before? Or can birthmarks change shape?

She remembered comparing it to the T on the card Dorothy had handed her. She remembered thinking it looked just like it. And during the club meeting, there was a distinct difference. She couldn't be crazy.

Perhaps it _was_ a bruise, and she re-injured it while she was having a nightmare. Perhaps she flailed her arm and hit the headboard.

Anything was possible, wasn't it? Except... magic. Magic is impossible. So are nightmares that are anything more than nightmares... she was not being _communicated_ with. She wasn't having a vision, or receiving a spiritual truth of any kind.

She peeled the magazine away and stood up, blew out the candle, and returned to bed.

...

The next morning, she dressed smartly, put on a hat, and followed the streets towards an alley that held an entrance to an old abandoned tube station.

Her pumps made a ghostly _clock, clock_ sound against the cement floors, and somewhere there was a tinny _drip drip_ into a puddle. The tracks lay abandoned in the darkness, and the darkness grew blacker still as she retraced her steps away from the stairs. Around a few corners, right, left, and right again, she came to the platform where she had first been greeted by Alice with a lantern held high.

Only there was no one to greet her this time, and no lantern. But it wasn't entirely without light; the room where they huddled by the small fire and drank their tea was lit by old kerosene lamps placed strategically around the room. There was only one occupant; a young man with black hair, blue eyes, and thick eyebrows on a pale, drawn face. He wasn't particularly handsome, but boyish. Sort of puppy-like.

 _And this must be the elusive Albert,_ Susan thought. He was bent over the counter, sitting on the old swivel stool where there should have been a ticket master and a glass divider. He was enthralled with an object, and as he turned it over in his hands, Susan realized it must be the amulet she'd heard Dorothy rave about. It looked like it might be made of stone, or a metal. It was shaped like person, or perhaps a spoon with arms, sort of like the voodoo dolls Susan had seen in curio shops in America, handmade and from New Orleans itself. Susan hadn't been impressed with their supposed properties then, and she was even less impressed with this tiny iron figure now.

So that's what they were all obsessed with? How anticlimactic.

The man looked up and noticed Susan. He motioned her inside. "Come in, come in," he said, folding the amulet into a handkerchief and replacing it within his breast pocket. "You must be the newest member."

Susan shrugged. "Not really. I've just come to see Jane."

"Yes, well," Albert shook her hand. She caught a faint whiff of gardenia hovering around him. It smelled sweet, and somewhat comforting. "She'll be along. You're welcome to wait if you like."

"Thank you," Susan sat by the empty metal pit that once held the fire. It was cold beneath the ground, and she could still hear a dripping sound somewhere out by the tracks.

"I'll start a fire," offered Albert. "You may be chilled." He went around the edge of the counter and ducked behind it, reemerging with a few firelogs in his arms. Susan noticed that he was walking with a slight limp, but perhaps it was exaggerated because he was carrying a heavy load.

"We keep a stash back here," he said, "Someday, I think, it would be nice to graduate and have our T club in an _actual_ tea shop. I don't think we have as many enemies waiting for us up there as Dorothy would have us believe. And I'm sure it's warmer, anyway."

"The T stands for travelers, doesn't it?" Susan asked.

" _The Traveler's Society of Magical Wanderings_ is the official name," Albert explained.

"I like it," Susan said, before she could think it through. No. She didn't like it at all. Why was she being _pleasing? Because,_ her mind answered before she could even deny the reality, _that's how you are with men._ Their good opinion and making them smile before all else. That was how she believed she was wired.

Albert propped the wood up over an old magazine and a whole handful of blank tickets without the train departure times stamped upon them. Then he flicked a match against the box and dropped it in the pit. The flame burned slowly, merely a thin line of orange eating away the edges of the paper.

"So you've never been anywhere... magical," Susan inferred.

"Not in the slightest."

"And you believe these magical places are out there."

"Of course. Don't you?"

Susan shook her head again.

"Oh," Albert looked at her with such concern that it was nearly touching. "They said you were a staunchy non-believer, but I didn't take them all that seriously."

"Who called me staunchy?" Susan asked. "It was Dorothy, wasn't it?"

"Pauline, actually. But you mustn't let that get to you. Pauline rarely likes anyone."

"I hope you don't find this rude," Susan changed tactics, "But how do you know any of them aren't just barking mad if you've never seen anything magical yourself to prove it?"

"Let me put it this way," Albert said, "That _is_ a little rude. This is _our_ safe space, where we can discuss our beliefs without judgement. To put everyone on the defensive while you're amongst us, forcing us to try and give evidence and smiling when we have none... it's rude, simple as that."

Susan's mouth had dropped open. No one had ever spoken to her that way before.

"But," Albert smiled at her warmly. "I've always been a bit of a rule breaker. So I can handle it. But my thought is this; the more questions you ask, the better. Keep asking them, but maybe without the haughtiness, of course. As our matriarch says..."

"Curiosity is key," Susan interrupted crisply. "Yes, I've heard it before."

"Good start," Albert stoked the fire with a pencil, until the pencil caught fire, then he tucked it within the logs. "I think while you're here, with us, try to think like us. If anything, pretend it's a scholarly excursion. You're here to study us and learn about us, not persecute us. All right?"

Susan touched a speck on the floor with the toe of her shoe, and shivered when it skittered suddenly away. "I can manage that," she said calmly. "May I ask how you came to be a believer in magic?"

"That's a very nicely put question," Albert winked at her. "My grandfather, James, used an amulet to travel all over the world and in history. Well, I mean, I called him Grandpa, but he was technically he was my father's uncle. Does that make him my great uncle?"

"Great-uncle, yes," Susan said distractedly. "I think the more confusing part of your sentence was not how he was related but the part about traveling in _history."_

"Time-Travel."

"Time travel, like in novels?" Susan clarified.

"Right... ancient Egypt was a personal favorite. He passed the amulet to me."

"And he told you bedtime stories to go along with it," Susan added.

"He told me the _truth_. When I saw the ad in the paper I just knew that he would want his amulet to be of some use to others like him, so I brought it along. But no matter what we've done, we cannot get it to work. When Peter and Edmund needed a way to get back in to Narnia to help the King... Tirian, I think his name was? He called me up and asked if they could give the amulet a try. It didn't work, naturally, but I was pleased that he trusted me to help him in an hour of need. Eventually they decided to use the old magician's magic rings instead, but..." Albert trailed off, and noticed that Susan was very flushed and wide-eyed, but hanging on to his every word.

"Then what?" she asked.

"Well," Albert hesitated, "They were on their way back from retrieving the rings when..."

"When the accident occurred," Susan whispered.

"Yes. From what we can gather, Peter and Edmund and your parents were on the platform... Lucy... and maybe Professor Kirk and Polly were on the train. Or perhaps," Albert scrubbed at his forehead in a strange gesture of forgetting, "It was the other way around?"

"You mean to tell me that they were all _near_ that train because they were searching for magic rings to take them to a magical land?" Susan said quietly.

"Yes, you see," Albert said, "During their dinner party at Professor Kirk's, they received a message from beyond, and Tirian... or was it Titian? He was pleading for their help. Someone had to have gotten through. You see, Peter explained that Aslan calls ordinary boys and girls from our world and into Narnia. So even if they were not successful, someone had to be."

"But they were fetching rings," Susan repeated with horrified belief. "The whole point of being near, or on, that train, was because of something magical related."

Albert could see the pain this gave her. "Yes," he said quietly.

The constable that had delivered the news to her had no such details... and why should he? No one knew what they were up to. It looked as if there were just too many people in one place at one time, that when a coincidental accident occurred, it took everyone that Susan loved.

"So you believe in the fairy tales my brothers and sister believed in," Susan asked, her voice thick, "Just as much as you believe in your grandfather's stories? And Wendy and Jane's accounts? And Dorothy's narcissistic belief she helped rule somewhere with a princess?"

"Don't forget Alice," Albert added. "She loves her magical land more than anyone I knew... the desire to return to it must be like a physical ache in her heart. She longs for it. Unlike Hank, who's just relieved he made it out of Camelot alive. Alice is more like your sister... Lucy," he laughed lightly, "Lucy was very special. Such a dear, sweet girl. She was hopeful... more hopeful than anyone I ever met. She was always very encouraging to me! Even when I had nothing but doubt!"

"Lucy was special," Susan repeated in a monotone.

Albert stood up, the limp pronounced as he walked to the door. "They'll be here soon, I should light it up a little. Do excuse me." He took up a cane leaning against the front door.

 _War injury,_ Susan realized. _That must be it. He's too young to have arthritis! He can't be more than thirty._

She watched Albert unashamedly as he hobbled out onto the platform, mesmerized by a certain beauty he seemed to possess in his crippled walk and his charismatic, but not beautiful, expression. Susan was used to seeing men as challenges. What was Albert to her? Was he a challenge, or was he the beginning of changing her habits around men?

Albert didn't seem like the rest, though. She simply didn't have the energy to seduce him.

Albert was an unwrapped parcel. But was he a gift, or a mis-delivery? Did she deserve to see any more than surface detail?

He pulled the lantern from inside the podium, and lit it up and set it on top. Once again it resembled a lamppost. Why that image refused to leave her mind, she didn't know.

 _Spare Oom._

Susan remembered her nightmare that night, and shivered, holding her hands out to the small fire.

Alice was the first to appear from the dark tunnel entrance, her silver hair done in a beautiful wide knot on the back of her head, with soft curling tendrils framing her face. She was arm in arm with Hank Sr., but he seemed far more keen on having her on his arm than she did.

Albert laughed with utter delight to see her, and bent down, kissing both of her cheeks, and then embraced Hank Sr. like a grandfather. Susan realized that's exactly what they were to him; honorary grandparents. Albert even mentioned that his great-uncle _passed_ the amulet to him, which meant he was likely dead. Maybe they had even said as much a week ago, but she was hazy on the details. She should have offered condolences for his loss, and hadn't thought about it.

"And look. Susan Pevensie is here to see Jane," Albert gestured to her as if she were a royal guest.

"Well, well, well, look who came back," Hank Sr. laughed. "Hank Jr. will be sorry he missed you. He was quite taken with you, he was. He felt dreadful after the whole debacle before. Just terrible."

Susan couldn't believe her own words that popped out of her mouth. "Tell him I forgive him, he mustn't worry."

"Isn't that nice?" Alice said, stepping inside and sitting beside Susan, patting her gently on the knee. "You're a very gentle heart, dear, underneath all the prickles. There's a romantic and a compassionate girl under that expression you wear. Why don't you let her out for today?"

Susan didn't even know what to say. "I... I don't..."

"It's all right," Alice whispered conspiringly. "I understand."

"How many can we expect today?" Albert asked.

Alice looked at Hank's wristwatch. "All the ladies, I think, except for the Morgan offspring. Hank Jr. is down with a cold, and Pauline is looking after him."

Hank Sr. smiled. "My children know how to take care of each other. Though usually they're both trying to take care of me. This will give us both a respite."

"Good people! You did not start without me, did you?" Dorothy swept into the room, wearing a velvet burgundy coat that hugged every curve to its absolute appeal, buttoned at a lacy white throat and fastened with a brooch. She took off a hat with feathers and set it atop a hat rack beside the door. She noticed Albert and frowned.

" _Alfred_ ," she gave him a prim nod, sitting as far away from him as she could.

" _Dot_ ," Albert grinned at her. "Fancy you forgetting my name already! I've only been gone a week."

"A week too long," Dorothy replied.

"You must have missed me something fierce then," Albert laughed. "Come, why don't we just acknowledge the truth?"

"What truth?"

"You're obviously in love with me. I can feel your passion just sizzling from across the room. You'd like to make an honest man of me, wouldn't you?"

"I'd rather vomit circus peanuts," Dorothy snapped.

"Children!" Hank Sr. rapped his cane sharply against the floor. "Let's settle this feud once and for all. Albert, what were you up to? Let's put our club president's mind at ease."

Albert shrugged. "I swam to France and spent a week in a little hamlet on the coast, dressed as a mime and living off the small coins tossed in my top hat."

"Try again," growled Dorothy.

"I went to an old house in Paris, covered in vines, and seduced a nun who was supposed to be caring for twelve orphans."

"Oh, you must think you are the greatest thing since Charlie Chaplin," Dorothy sighed.

Alice rolled her eyes, and whispered to Susan, "They're always like this."

"Here, as a token of my good will," Albert pulled the amulet from the handkerchief and unwrapped it. "Why don't you hang on to this for a few days?" he tossed it unceremoniously over the fire, and Dorothy caught it in both hands with a surprised yelp.

"Don't throw something so valuable!" she chided. "What if something happened?"

"That's the point, Dot," Albert exclaimed. "Nothing ever happens. It doesn't work. I wasn't using it this last week. I have a life outside of these underground tunnels, and I was off living it. My business is my own business. Why don't you just play around with that for awhile, see if anything comes of it? Give it back to me on Saturday."

"Next Saturday?" Alice questioned. "It seems we're always losing you, Albert dear. Where are you off to THIS time?"

"To the Russian wastelands of Siberia, to see the snow queen," Albert winked.

Dorothy huffed with annoyance.

"I am sorry we're late!" Wendy came trotting into the tunnel, Jane slowly waddling behind her. "One thing just led to another..."

"She means I was having difficulty walking," Jane said, pausing at the sight of Susan. "You came back," she said with genuine surprise. "I wasn't sure if you would."

Wendy looked at the two of them, and hustled her bag and hat to the hat tree and hung them up. "Well," she said quietly, "Why wouldn't she? We're practically family, after all."

"I was coming to see you," Susan said. "I wanted to inquire about you and the baby. See how you lot were getting on."

Jane looked at her with big eyes. "How thoughtful of you!" she came and sat beside her, and Susan found herself smiling at her. _Smiling, and at another young, pretty woman. Would wonders never cease?_

"How are _you_ two doing?" Wendy said to Hank and Alice, trying to give Jane a little privacy. They began to chatter amongst themselves in low tones.

"Would you... would you like to feel the baby kick?" Jane asked.

"The baby is kicking right now?" Susan asked with surprise.

"No, but she always kicks when I want her to," Jane said.

"She?"

"Yes, I think it's a she. I feel that it is. Don't you?"

Susan smiled. "Peter would have loved a daughter. He would have made her a princess and spoiled her dreadfully."

"Well, try this," Jane took Susan's hand and placed it gently on her upper belly. It was still, save for Jane's breathing. "Now," Jane whispered, "Pat the baby gently and say _Aslan loves you."_

Susan nearly shook her head, and bit her lip. Of course it would be something Narnian.

"Oh go on, you silly thing, it won't _invoke_ Aslan's spirit or anything," Jane encouraged. "I wouldn't let you say it if it _did._ I would not want to be here for _that_ conversation."

Susan gave her a chiding look, and patted her stomach gently. "Aslan loves you," she said, flippantly, trying to prove it didn't trouble her at all.

The baby kicked, a soft thump against the womb, and Susan's hand flinched in surprise.

Jane clapped her hands. "See?" she congratulated Susan. "Not so hard. She'll be terribly dramatic, I think. Like her grandmother."

Wendy shot her a mock scolding expression.

"You know what I was thinking," Susan said. "Is that... um... perhaps we should spend some time together."

"I am so glad to hear you say it," Wendy interjected. "We try to meet two or three times a week. Always in the evenings, except for Saturdays, then we meet in the mornings."

"Of course we'd be honored if you'd let us include you," Alice said.

"I am aghast," Dorothy laughed gaily. "Susan Pevensie consenting to join us at last? None of you can say I _didn't_ have anything to do with it..."

"Well, that's not really what I was thinking, I mean," Susan could see this going much too far. "What I was thinking of... I was thinking of... shopping. I'd love to buy something... um... for the baby," she turned back to Jane, trying to exclude the rest from misinterpreting her again. "But not without your approval, of course."

"That sounds like fun," Jane replied. Alice discreetly nudged her foot with her toe. "Perhaps we could meet here, after the meetings," Jane said. "Then go find some nice little place downtown to explore. First we'll buy something for the baby. Then we'll buy something for us."

Susan breathed a sigh of relief. This was what she could do; this was in her _capacity_ to do. Spending a little money and maybe even getting Jane a decent pair of nylons without any runs. Honestly, what she was wearing was _embarrassing_ as the mother of her future niece.

"Excellent," Susan said, standing. "What do you think about Tuesday evening?"

"Tuesday evening would be lovely," Jane said.

"I'll see you then," Susan replied.

"Oh, don't go just yet!" Albert exclaimed. "The fun is just getting started!"

"Well, since you ARE here," Alice said suggestively, "Even though you girls have already made your plans... why don't you stay a little longer? Hank Sr. is going to grace us with a story today."

"This is news to me," Hank Sr. said. "Won't you do me the honor of staying, Miss Pevensie? These old birds will tell me anything an old man wants to hear, but if they demand a story, and my story isn't really all that good, can I trust you for an honest opinion?"

Susan glanced at them uncomfortably. "Well, I suppose a little while longer wouldn't hurt," she said, sitting down again. "I will warn you, Mr. Morgan. I am a harsh critic."

"Right then!" Hank Sr. turned to Alice, eyes glinting. "What story do you wish to hear, mademoiselle?"

Alice pulled a small, old book from her handbag. The brown wave was old, and the title on the binding was unreadable. "I have procured this," she said triumphantly. "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, American humorist and essayist and novel writer."

There was a stunned silence.

"Pray tell, what is the synopsis?" Albert asked airily.

"Ahem," Alice recited, "A yankee from Connecticut named Hank Morgan suffers from an engineering accident and awakens to find himself in 6th century England during the reign of King Arthur and uses his knowledge of the future to rise to the top."

"That's me, all right," Hank laughed bashfully.

"You got all your ideas from a book?" Susan asked, rather shrilly. "I believed you were a fraud, Mr. Morgan, but to plagiarize and swindle these people?"

"Wait just a moment," Alice said. "Miss Pevensie, you mistake me."

Susan bit her lip.

"Mr. Hank Morgan is not under any doubt as to whether our experiences are real," Alice explained, "But an accusation of breaking our solemn vow of secrecy!" She handed Hank the book. "We _agreed_ not to tell."

"Just look at the published date on that volume!" Hank laughed, opening to the first page and holding it upright for her to see. "Alice, once again, your curiosity forces you to jump to conclusions. I sold my story _long_ before I answered the ad in the paper and we agreed to be monks in a subway."

"Eighteen-eighty-nine," Alice read out loud.

"I was twenty-eight years old," Hank replied wistfully. "When I was approached by a man in a museum named Mr. Twain, who as you can see, refers to himself only as the _Narrator_ in that little book. Over a process of many interviews and days spent together, he turned my autobiography into a little comedic adventure novel. With some embellishments."

"I am curious about which embellishments?" Alice asked.

"Don't you worry, Alice, this was long before I met you," Hank assured, "But I was married once..."

Alice gave a little sigh. "It matters to me not if you've been in previous relationships!"

"Well, anyhow... My wife, Sandy and I, were very happy at first, you know. Before she left me- but I am getting ahead of myself. Twain says she was a woman in the past whom I fell in love with and had a daughter with, and when she fell ill the Catholic Church forced us to flee Camelot. That's a fabrication, of course." Hank flexed his hands of paper skin, the blotchy age marks prominent and dark. Susan saw a matching mark on his inner wrist, a fully fledged star. Or perhaps it was just another coincidental age spot.

"I fled Camelot _period,_ and I was not with a wife and daughter," Hank went on, "I met Sandy when I returned to America, and had Pauline and Hank Jr. here. But Mr. Twain thought it would be more exciting if he moved our first meeting earlier, had us marry in the past, and then put Pauline's life in mortal peril and change her name to something very silly." Hank turned and looked at Susan with a soft smile. "I told Mr. Twain to kill me off at the end so that I could live anonymously."

Susan didn't know what to say. Did they expect her to throw her gloves to the ground and say _I give up on being a non believer?_ There was nothing they could say or do to make her believe that Hank's story was any truer than the others. In fact it seemed less likely, now. So he read this book in his youth by Mark Twain, and as the memories crippled by time and age were warped, he actually believed the incidents occurred to him because he shared the same name as the protagonist.

"Why don't you tell us about a joust or something?" Albert laughed. "You always tell us about coming home or getting there, nothing in the middle."

Hank shrugged. "I am old and tired. Why don't you read my autobiography?" He tossed Albert the book, who caught it with a jovial smile.

Wendy pulled a knitting project from her bag and picked up in the middle of a stitch, watching the on-goings with a bemused smile. She was making a pair of bootie slippers for the baby. "Well, Dorothy," she said, "Any news on the Oklahoma front?"

"No," Dorothy said with a pout, slumping in her chair. "Betsy's relations won't say a word."

"Another girl from America went to Oz at some point," Jane explained to Susan. "Betsy said she was shipwrecked and that's how she ended up in Oz."

"If she's in Oz, and you're here, how do you know anything about it?" asked Susan.

"Well, she arrived while I was still there. And she decided to stay _forever,"_ Dorothy imitated in a high-pitched, girly voice. "But she never told me the details before I was sucked away, and her distant relations in Oklahoma have _no_ intention of telling me how she was shipwrecked."

"Are you trying to... recreate her shipwreck to get back?" Susan asked with surprise.

"It's worth a try," Dorothy shrugged.

"To kill yourself?" Susan exclaimed.

Dorothy gave her a level stare. It was such a vague poker-face that for a moment Susan thought she was trying to hide something. "That's how it always happens."

"How what happens?"

"Getting to Oz. I got swept up in a tornado. I was washed overboard on my way to Australia. Betsy was shipwrecked. I got stuck in a terrible earthquake. Those are the methods by which I've been pushed into the realm of Oz, and the nearby land of Ev, and so it seems my life must be in ultimate peril in order to trigger the magic."

"So why don't you become a test pilot?" Albert asked with a wink.

"Unexpected dangers to my life are the portal, not just being stupid," Dorothy said with exasperation. "I think it has to be a natural disaster or a tragic accident."

Susan shifted uncomfortably. It sounded much too suicidal.

"Your brother used to give me the same look you're giving me now," Dorothy sighed.

"Peter doesn't approve of reckless endangerment," Susan shrugged. "He believed in... sacrifice. Danger as a last resort."

"Not Peter," Dorothy said, "Edmund."

Susan felt her wounds open again, her heart bleeding anew. But at the same time, it made her smile a little. She and Edmund had few things in common, except for being quick to play fair and being extroverted later in life but not as children. It seemed that Edmund found Dorothy's theories just as troubling as she did, and it made her feel as if she had caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye. A brief touch of her brother's hand, and maybe a half-grin that indicated he was on her side no matter how much Dorothy tried to sway everyone around her.

"Oh," she said in a small voice. "I see."

"Edmund wasn't a member of the T club, you see," Dorothy reminded her. "He visited once in awhile but we didn't really get on."

"You scared him off, likely as not," Albert said. "When you said you wanted to stand on the nearest rooftop when that terrible thunderstorm erupted last summer because a lightening strike might open the portal."

Alice tsked. "If there was one small piece of advice I could give you young people, it would be stop living like you're immortal and live like you _want_ to go on forever. Take care of yourselves! Eat! Exercise! Do not go anywhere near a rooftop during a thunder and lightening storm."

"Speaking of living forever," Wendy said with a wistful expression. "I saw the ship again last night."

"I was sound asleep and missed the whole thing," Jane added gloomily. "What I wouldn't give for one more glance!"

"What ship?" asked Susan.

"Captain Hook's pirate ship still sails the night skies," Wendy said with a shrug. "Whether or not he's returned from the belly of a crocodile is up for debate, certainly. But I believe Peter Pan is captain now, and he sails the ship across the clouds until it really looks like one."

Susan nodded slowly. "So... you've seen a pirate ship... in the sky?"

"Sailing on the clouds," repeated Wendy.

Albert gave Susan a half smile, but it looked more like a challenge.

"How... pleasant," Susan finished lamely.

Wendy laughed instead of being offended. "I know you don't believe me, Susan. It's all right. We can live with our differences, can't we? _I_ am just so overjoyed that you know about Jane and Peter. It's not right to keep you in the dark... not at all. You can think I'm barking mad for believing in Peter Pan... but the thought that we might go on as a family... and have you over at times to spend some time with the baby... that's all that matters, doesn't it?"

Jane nodded emphatically. They were very alike, the two of them. Jane embodied the hope and youth of everything that Wendy believed in, and Wendy had the instinct and gentleness to guide her daughter through being a single mother. Together they made a pair of bookends, the sort that didn't match but should never be separated anyhow.

"Of course," Susan agreed. "Peter would have been so pleased."

...

Albert recreated a rousing tale told by him by his great uncle Jimmy. Susan had a hard time following it involved five children, a sand fairy, and a series of misadventures where time was warped and nothing was as it seemed. Albert had them all in stitches. At one point, he stood up and recreated a conversation between his mother, Anthea, and an Egyptian guard, who had an argument about the origin of the pyramids. Anthea knew it had likely been built by Hebrew slaves, and the Egyptian argued that it was placed there by a god.

"She says, OI, there's only one God, you know, an' his people built your palaces," Albert mimicked a high-pitched British school-girl voice. "Your Pharaoh is a dictator!"

Susan politely raised her hand.

"Yes, to the little lady in the front," Albert pointed at her with a flourish.

"How did a little girl from England and an ancient Egyptian understand each other?" she asked practically.

"Oh, that's an easy one," Albert laughed, "The amulet works as a translator. Anthea heard the guard in English, and he heard her in Ancient Egyptian."

Susan pretended to smile when everyone burst into laugher.

Everyone around the circle shared a story. Wendy told them about a wolf that she was raising in Neverland, and how she believed the wolf could hear her thoughts. Jane said that a fairy called Fusspot had adopted Peter Pan as her own sometime after his first fairy, Tinkerbell, had passed away. Fusspot was very kind and dainty, and couldn't stand it if any child were ill or mistreated. She singlehandedly convinced Peter to take in half a dozen lost boys in less than a year, multiplying their little family until they had a compound of boys and girls and had to move out of their Home Tree.

As the hour came to a close, the club was beginning to look expectantly towards Alice. It seems that it was a tradition that she end close things up. Instead of telling an amusing story, she waved her thin, wrinkled hand, with a sad sort of smile on her face. "You don't want to hear me ramble about the old days, do you?" she sighed and rubbed her eyes. "This old lady needs rest. Let's meet again next week and discuss having a party for Jane's baby."

"I love parties!" said Hank Sr.

"Ladies only," Alice declared.

Everyone began to stand up and put their coats on, returning to normal subjects such as the baby, and the post-war changes in society, and whether or not to bring umbrellas next time.

Susan tuned everyone out and remained entirely focused on Alice. Dear, sweet Alice, a harmless old lady who believed so strongly in magic that the grief of losing it was etched in every feature. It was odd how Susan found features similar to her own, when they looked nothing alike.

Everyone began to bid goodbye and wish everyone safe travels until next time, and Susan waved farewell as she remained in her seat. Then at last, it was only Susan and Alice.

Alice was crying softly.

"Whatever is the matter?" Susan asked with obvious concern.

Alice looked at her with big blue eyes, sodden with tears and her wrinkled chin trembling. "Oh, my dear," she said sadly, "I just miss Wonderland and the Hatter so very much. When I was a child I just couldn't wait to get home, where everything made sense and no one spoke nonsense. But I grew up and realized adults speak nonsense more often than not. My husband made sure of that. And nothing makes sense, either." She took Susan's hands in her own and held them tightly in her lap. " _You_ know. You've lost your whole family. I lost both my eldest boy, David, in the war. Andrew Jr. lost his mind somewhere in the trenches of France and hasn't found it yet."

Susan felt physical pain in her chest for Alice's sake.

"Life doesn't make any sense at all, and how is this life worth the grief and horror it holds? I could have stayed in Wonderland, you know." She sniffed, and dabbed her nose and eyes with her sleeve. "I had a third adventure I rarely tell anyone about. When I was probably about your age. I never told my husband about it. I mean, the affair was before I met him."

"You don't have to tell me about it," Susan said politely. "Not if it makes you unhappy."

"I went back to Wonderland when I was about twenty or twenty-one," Alice went on. "Hatter was almost the same as I left him, only... more lucid. He was still having a Tea-Party, but it was if he had been _awakened._ He wondered why he was sitting there drinking tea all the time, and why the Dormouse spoke in riddles. He wanted to know why no one but me had been brave enough to stand up to the Queen of Hearts."

Susan nodded, trying to help despite the fact none of this made any sense to her. "Perhaps this Hatter you met was beginning to see reality," she said gently.

"Wonderland stopped shifting. It seems that as _I_ grew up, so did Wonderland begin to. My imagination was not nearly as wild, and neither was Wonderland. And the Mad Hatter was just a Hatter, no longer mad. I fell for him, and he for me. We made all sorts of wild plans about taking down the Red Queen and White Queens, who were doing battle against each other and making Wonderland suffer for it. The Queen of Hearts was mere child's play by comparison. For all the awakening of Wonderland, another thing woke up; violence and hatred. The Jabberwocky stalked the woods again."

Susan bit her lip. _What the hell is a Jabberwocky?_

"But something went wrong with the magic," Alice sighed. "Hatter thought I wasn't safe there. We arranged for a rabbit hole to be dug near where I was staying. I promised I would come back as soon as I could. Hatter told me my promise would keep him alive. Then we kissed one last time," Alice began to cry again, "And I crawled through the rabbit hole and emerged at my parent's estate. And from that point on, I was never able to go back. Every mirror remained solid. Every hole only surface-deep. There is no magic for me to return to Wonderland. I've tried EVERYTHING!"

Susan made a soothing sound and patted her back gently. "There was more in this life for you to live," she said, and she was surprised to find that it was the same sort of answer she hated from people who tried to explain away the train accident. "That's why. You're here in a land without magic because that's where you were meant to be... to live... and to grow."

Alice looked up at Susan. "I can see it now," she said softly, "There you are, Queen Susan... the Gentle. I knew you were in there somewhere."

"There, there, don't be silly," Susan said. "This is about _you_ right now." she searched her handbag for a hanky, finally locating one and handing it across. "Here. Dry your eyes."

Alice dabbed at her eyes again. "I married Andrew Sr. not more than a few years after I returned from Wonderland. I was getting to be an old maid at twenty three, and my parents worried I would be a true spinster. I completely gave up on magic and was horribly depressed. But when I had David and Andrew Jr. my life changed... I found purpose in them!"

"Children must help the aggrieved," Susan said. "Just look at Jane... and Peter. She'll have his child to remember him by."

"Well," Alice said bitterly, "Peter died heroically. My marriage ended because I divorced Andrew almost twenty years ago. You know why? He found himself much too indulgent with his prostitutes and it made the papers. I was so humiliated!"

Susan opened her mouth, and closed it again. She thought it best to not comment on adultery.

Alice let out a short little laugh. "And there is the story of Alice Little-Whitmore. The woman without magic and a heart too weak to see around that. Am I not a pathetic figure?"

"I think you're very brave, to have lost so much and yet still lead a group of people all searching for similar things. That's very brave of you." Susan found it to be true... for once, she wasn't lying just to make someone feel better. "You've made me feel better."

"Really?" Alice took her hands in her own again. "Then I am happy for that, my dear. So happy." She stood and embraced her closely. "We miss Peter, Lucy, and Edmund so very much," she whispered. "nothing that compares to your grief, of course. But you must understand that we have all lost someone. We all know how it feels." She pulled back. "You may lean on us, when life is too difficult. You're welcome anytime. We are very non-judgmental folk."

"I can see that," Susan chuckled lightly, through tears threatening to spill forth. "I am so very sorry that you are stuck here, and cannot go to Wonderland."

"I guess it doesn't really matter though," Alice said honestly, "You don't believe in Wonderland."

"I believe that you believe it," Susan walked to the hat rack and took down Alice's heavy coat. She returned and wrapped it around the frail woman's bony shoulders. "And that makes your sadness real."

"Thank you, dear," Alice said.

"May I offer you my arm?" Susan asked.

"Yes, thank you." They linked arms, and Susan turned out the last kerosene lamp. Together they walked slowly into the darkness through the tunnels. The drip, drip, drip of a puddle somewhere didn't seem nearly as terrifying, and Susan led Alice back to the entrance as if she'd been coming through this old underground her whole life. Somehow, in Alice's tearful monologue and the vulnerability of sharing her doubts and fears, Susan felt the judgement of their magic slip away. Her hard exterior was beginning to be worn down by kindness, and the relief of knowing that she did not sit among a room of hypocrites who just wanted to get drunk at the next party or find a way into Susan Pevensie's knickers.

It was almost like feeling safe and loved, in a world where nothing was safe and everyone she loved was dead.

...

Susan safely saw Alice into a cab before turning and trying to hail one for herself. She raised her arm and stepped to the curb, only to see someone familiar out of the corner of her eye.

Albert was still hanging about, speaking with Dorothy. They appeared to be arguing, two shadows on the nearest street corner with abrupt and intense hand gestures. She quickly lowered her hand and stepped back by a police box, unashamed of her eavesdropping.

They kept their voices low, but Susan thought she heard snatches and phrases here and there.

"-always running off with the damn amulet!"

"I gave it to you for safekeeping, didn't I?"

"Only because you know I don't know how to use it!"

"Well, maybe I'll tell you my secrets if you tell me yours!"

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Meaning I think you're hiding something, Miss Gale."

"I'm an honest American, and I resent your accusation."

"I think you're an honest American who will do anything to get back to your precious Oz."

"What a ludicrous statement!"

"Deny it all you like! There's something different about you, something greedy in your eyes. You've had it ever since you met Susan Pevensie! Maybe even before that. You want something from her, I'd warrant. You think she can help you get back to Oz."

"Susan Pevensie couldn't find a way to Oz even if the yellow brick road led her from her own door to the steps of the Emerald City. She'd find a way to go around it and end up at that shoddy hotel where she works just like she always does."

"Dot, you're a peach, have I ever told you that?"

"Albert, you're a dog."

"I thought you liked dogs."

"I liked _my_ dog. Before he _died._ I'll thank you not to remind me of him."

"Are we ever going to be friends?"

"I have much too fun being your enemy. Same time next week?"

"Would I miss our verbal martial arts for the world?"

"Enjoy a week without a magical getaway."

"Enjoy having an amulet that _doesn't bloody work!"_

With exasperated groans, Dorothy and Albert turned away from each other and marched down the sidewalk in opposite directions. Without a second thought, Susan stepped out from behind the police box and followed Albert down the street..

Keeping behind garden gates, trees lining the road, or corners, Susan managed to discreetly stalk Albert for nearly half a mile. The distance didn't trouble her a bit; she felt that in a past life, she might have been accustom to walking great distances without cabs nearby. She had always been athletic in her youth, joining rowing and swim teams and generally trying to prove that she could be better than the boys.

Where had that spark and energy gone? When she returned to school after staying with Professor Kirk, she had been enveloped by a dark depression. Peter, Lucy, and Edmund couldn't help her, and only through the help of the girls at her boarding school was she able to come into her own again. She wondered if it was something clinical, a digestive imbalance of some kind. There had been no reason to be so bloody sad, exhausted, and angry all the time... but she was.

And only when her roommates, Agatha and Helen, taught her how to do her hair and make up, Susan was able to find ways to make boys fill the empty void inside her heart.

Eventually she gave up trying to beat the boys in sports, and tried to win their hearts instead. And it worked.

Susan's memories were partially interrupted when she saw Albert ascend a tram. His figure disappeared inside, maneuvering through the people sitting or standing. Susan reached out her hand and caught the handle as it rolled slowly by, the loud clanking of the engine drowned out momentarily by a whistling horn. She remained near the front, sliding into a seat behind the conductor. Every few moments, she peeked over the back of the seat.

Albert looked thoughtfully out the window, his reflection in the glass revealing nothing but a passive expression that watched the buildings and the people go speedily by.

When they came to another stop, Susan pulled the brim of her hat down to hide her face. Three or four people stood and exited the tram, but Albert didn't. She breathed a sigh of relief and settled in for another brief haul.

After five or so more stops, Susan was beginning to relax. If he hadn't noticed her now, he probably wouldn't, ever. Whatever he was up to, she'd find it out. It might be easy to fool Dorothy, but not her. Dorothy wasn't willing to exert herself to solve any puzzle. Susan had a curiosity that rivaled Alice's obsession with the word itself.

She was so busy congratulating herself that she didn't notice at first when the tram came to another halt. The few seconds cost her her secrecy.

"Ahem," said Albert, standing in the aisle and looking down at her with a bemused expression.

Susan looked up innocently. "Oh. It's you."

Albert held out his hand. "Come on. No use hiding now."

Susan diligently accepted his hand and followed him off the tram. "It's been years since I've ridden one of these," she said lightly, pretending she did not need to apologize for following him.

"Well," Albert shrugged, walking her down the sidewalk, "I didn't want to catch a cab. It would have been _much_ harder for you to follow me."

"Did you know it the whole time?" Susan asked, peevishly.

"Of course I did."

"I'm just curious about why things are so difficult between you and Dorothy."

"Because we don't trust each other," Albert stopped her and looked at her steadily. "Don't you think it's important to only be friends with someone you can trust?"

Susan discreetly took back her hand and wrapped her arms around herself. It was chilly out. "I should think so."

"I can assume that you've followed me because you want to know my secret," Albert added.

Susan didn't expect him to be so... brazen. "Well, yes," she admitted. "There's something funny going on."

"All right," Albert said, "If I trust you with this, it means we should be friends."

It was impossible to be _friends_ with men, as they usually only wanted a specific sort of relation with Susan. She shifted uncomfortably, and looked at his earnest face. He seemed an honorable young man, and not particularly interested in settling down with a girl any time soon. Maybe they could be friends.

"Friends," Susan agreed.

Albert turned and walked off the sidewalk and down the curved drive of Middlesex Hospital. Susan balked at first.

"Well, come on," Albert said. He held out his hand. "Do you want to hold my hand again?"

"I'm perfectly capable of..."

Albert took her hand again despite her protest and tucked it around his arm, as if they were a young couple on a yacht, not two acquaintances who barely know each other. But for some reason, everything about the T club... or the Tea Club... or the Traveler's Society of _what ever the bloody hell it is,_ none of the typical rules applied. So what if she had just met Albert a few hours ago?

This felt like the natural progression of a heroine in a novel that Lucy might like to read, going along with every situation that presented itself and believing the best in everyone. So what if Hank Jr. practically kidnapped her? Didn't Lucy believe she'd been kidnapped by a faun who wanted to sell her to the witch? And were they not the best of friends?

And Lucy _willingly_ returned to Narnia, so she said, even to see the very faun who kidnapped her. Susan may be drawn back to the abandoned tube station for the same reasons. What if there was more to the mundane? What if she might be friends with them? Would it be so wrong to be friends with them, after all?

Susan realized; maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but that didn't matter, because _she had no one left._

Oh, Lucy and her faun stories... She'd know just what to say or do. She drank the tea, listened to the music, and ate the toast with sardines. Susan was walked arm-in-arm with someone who felt just a little magical, probably only because he believed in it so devoutly, but she was not excited about the brick and pillared building they approached.

It was the Middlesex Hospital.

Her first reaction wasn't so virtuous. She wondered what sort of diseases might be lying in wait for her recently grieving and vulnerable health.

The second reaction was understandable confusion. What the hell was _Albert_ doing here? How was this part of his big secret?

And the third was where the Queen tried to peer behind the heavy curtain of her prison: What was wrong with Albert, and why should fate see fit to give her a new friend, only to limp slight

Susan didn't want to walk through the front doors with him, but she did.

It was her sardines on toast.

...

"Albert, lovely to see you, as usual," said at least three nurses as they walked through the front.

She caught a brief glimpse of somber paintings in the front hospital lobby, waiting to greet people and remind them it was a place where one ought not to be happy. The images were long figures in gray, standing on stairs, or sitting at tables around spheres of light. The effect was supposed to be merciful, but she felt the result was grotesque.

Albert led Susan expertly down the halls, past all normal front-desk operatives or wards where Albert could have had someone to visit. Susan had a sinking feeling that he knew his way around; not because he was visiting a friend or another Tea Club member, but because he was a patient.

"And who is this lovely lady?" asked a man in a white coat.

"This companion of mine is Susan Pevensie," Albert introduced with flourish. "My friend."

"How do you do," Susan barely managed to say before Albert had whisked her off again. He led her through the doors marked _Radioactive Treatments._

"Albert," she said, her voice choking up ever so slightly. _Don't be melodramatic,_ she reminded herself. After all, they only just met! _Don't get attached. Don't get attached. Everyone dies someday, some sooner than most._ "I won't go another step until you tell me why we're here."

"My appointment for radiation therapy. Or whatever they're calling it nowadays." Albert sat in a small chair and patted his leg, the one that he favored in a limp that morning, with a reluctant smile. "Bone cancer. From my knee to my ankle. And spreading fast. I practically live here."

Susan stood still, her body refusing to have a reaction of any kind.

"You know they've recently approved a new medicine," Albert said. "Believe it or not, they made it somehow out of the mustard gas the chaps use in the war. Or maybe it was inspired by it? Or maybe just made of the same substance. I don't remember. But by the time it's in circulation by any normal hospital, it'll probably be too late for me."

She realized she was shaking. "This is ridiculous," she said, coughing and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "I don't even _know_ you. In fact, I don't even know if I LIKE you!" Albert tried to say something funny and smiling, but she went on. "Maybe it's my fault," she whispered. "Sooner or later, everyone I know dies. By association, you're going to die sooner than you should. It's my destiny to see everyone around me go to an early grave."

"Who says I'm dying?" Albert said, his smile faltering. "I'm just sick." He reached up and took her hand, and pulled her down to the seat beside him. To her surprise, he put his arms around her and embraced her. His thin body-type and dark hair made him, just for a moment, look just like Edmund. Hugging him _felt_ like hugging Edmund.

She hugged him back. "I'm very sorry," she whispered. "I realize we're strangers, but..."

"We're not, remember?" Albert pulled back. "You agreed. We're friends."

"Yes, well... new friends. Very new." Susan looked away with embarrassment. "I just wanted to say if you need anything. Anything at all. I'm sure you'll let me know, won't you? I don't have anyone else in the world, I might as well spend some effort and look after you."

Albert smiled. "That's the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me."

"I don't think I've ever been responsible for saying the sweetest thing to anyone," Susan nearly smiled. She looked towards the door, and the clock above it. "When's your appointment?"

"In... thirty seconds."

"Shall I go in with you?"

Albert looked at her the way Edmund would when he was proud of her. "You know, you really are a gentle person. It's no wonder your siblings called you a Queen."

But it didn't answer her question. "Well... shall I?"

"You can't go in with me. Radiation, and all. They put me in a lead-lined room and pull a giant thing down from the ceiling and... well, you can watch through the window if you like? Nurse Hartford, the x-ray technician, probably wouldn't mind. I'm an old favorite."

"Only if you like."

"I think I'd like just about anything you say, or do, Susan Pevensie. You're a refreshing spring in a desert of old, crabby people."

"I don't think I've ever refreshed anyone, either."

"That's where you're wrong. You've been hiding in disguise for far too long, you've just forgotten. _This_ is the real you, this kind, warm, and curious creature. You just offered to go into a radioactive room with a stranger!"

Susan let herself smile. "But you said we're not strangers. We're friends."

"Why yes, I did say that, didn't I?" Albert winked.

The doors opened and Nurse Hartford stepped out, followed by another white-coated doctor, this one a little younger and handsomer.

"Where have you been all my life?" Albert rose to greet them.

"Married, remember?" said Nurse Hartford, beckoning him into a room full of strange wall panels with dials and buttons, like nothing Susan had ever seen before.

"Not you!" Albert teased. "Doctor Handsome over here."

"All right, you dandy," chided Dr. Handsome, whose name-tag read _Hansen._ "Flattery will get you very little from me."

"Will it get me a special guest to wait in here with Nurse Hartford?" Albert asked sweetly. "I'll be good, I promise."

"You're already being very naughty," said the doctor, "You're not using your cane like I specifically asked you to."

Albert slapped his forehead. "I left it at..." he looked at Susan. "At the Tea Shop," he said with realization. "By the door."

"You did," Susan nodded emphatically. "I can promise he was using it very diligently this morning."

Albert grinned at her as if to say, _partners in crime._ Then he took her hand and squeezed it. "Wish me luck," he said, and he stood and led them through to another chamber. Susan was allowed to sit in a room full of wall panels of dials and knobs and meters with needles that whisked back and forth. She didn't understand much of what she was seeing, only that the x-ray technician was a friendly brunette about her own age. She could watch Albert through a window while she sat at a small table and adjusted the x ray's controls. The doctor and the nurse shut the heavy door behind them, and the room lined with lead looked like any old exam room, save the large machine hanging from the ceiling that looked sort of like a telescope.

Susan made herself as comfortable as she could be in a small chair, and before lying down on the bed, Albert gave her one last look through the window. He smiled and winked again, but the light didn't reach his eyes this time.

 _He's scared,_ thought Susan, giving him a timid wave. They pulled the machine down from the ceiling, adjusting the length and angle until it was pointed at a specific portion of his calf. Susan's mind went back to Dorothy's prods and accusations of Albert, and came to her own decision. _Maybe I was a failure with my family. Maybe this is a second chance. I couldn't protect them, but I can try protecting somebody._

She would never let Dorothy grouse at Albert for his absences ever again, even if she had to attend every single bloody Tea Club meeting to do it.

 _..._

* * *

 _Dear readers, I hope you are love reading this as much as I've loved writing it... each chapter gives me more joy than the last! I am so excited to begin work on chapter 5!_

 _Please review and let me know what you think..._


	5. Twas Brillig, and the Slithy Toves

Dear readers,

I am so sorry it's been so long since my update! I'm actually joined a club in real life, however, not a society of magical wanderings, but a writer's club, which is next best! haha! Anyway I've been working so hard on my original works and YouTube stuff that I haven't been able to write as much as I wanted with this but I am not forgetting I promise. Please see the end for a longer note about what makes this story important to me! And don't forget to review!

Thank you,

Pip

* * *

Chapter Five

Twas Brillig, and the Slithy Toves

* * *

Susan was beginning to notice colors again.

How quickly the lovely details of life become unimportant when grieving, and only the mundane or unpleasant stand out in sharp visibility.

 _There are sixty tiles on this wall,_ thought Susan one morning, when she walked towards her switchboard room at the hotel, counting each tile along the way. _Sixty - or perhaps sixty one. I'll count again at lunch to be sure._

Or other troubling thoughts, such as, _This birthmark began has a speck, with tendrils spreading outward like a T, but has since shifted and grown more tails, turning into a cross, and then a secondary line running through. And now thickening, and becoming a star-shape. Now it is most definitely a small, pronounced star, like a sticker used in a child's scrap-book. It looks as if it were drawn onto me by a thick, ink pen._

 _Perhaps its cancerous._

But now, these thoughts came far less often. In their place came the colors, traipsing by like a springtime parade. _What a lovely royal blue hat Dorothy wore yesterday,_ Susan thought.

And another - _Is Jane's reddish hair and green ribbons not the most flattering combination she's ever worn? Perhaps I've been a good influence! She is positively glowing and lovely, and... oh. But perhaps that is because of her pregnancy. Maybe I had very little to do with her improved appearance at all._

And finally... _These leaves are so lush and golden today. Hardly Narnian, though._ And in her own shock, Susan let russet-colored maple leaf from her hand fall to the sidewalk.

And what made her wonder if a foliage's color was worthy of that landscape? A _fictional_ landscape?

"My mind is my own," Susan whispered out loud to herself. "I mustn't be taken in. I may make friends but I should not, _ought_ not, to be so easily influenced."

"Talking to yourself, are we?" Dorothy was suddenly at her side, linking her arm through hers, leading her down the thin alley, as if they were just two friends looking into shop windows.

"More often than not, I regret to say, if only to remind myself of something that I'll forget unless spoken aloud," Susan confessed. "I thought that I was running late tonight."

"Why, no, not at all," Dorothy said with her delighted flair. "You're just in time! And we wouldn't even consider starting without you, since you've _almost_ been a regular for a month now. I think it brings a new level of depth to our little group to practically have an _atheist_ among us, even if she only consents to be present once or twice a week. Such diversity!"

Susan supposed that if anyone was meant to play Daisy Buchanan in the movies, the Great Gatsby's lover, it would be Dorothy Gale. She had that charmed lilt to her voice that automatically made you feel as if she were just _thrilled_ to be speaking in _your_ presence some great secret that only she could tell. A hypnotism disguised as good midwestern manners.

Susan read enough of Fitzgerald to articulate just how lovely, but how dangerous, that could be.

And while they chatted, almost merrily, the letter from Archie was burning a hole in Susan's pocket.

 _My dear Miss Pevensie,_

 _Martha and I bear the great news to your burning query! There was in fact a sole survivor to the great tornado of August 25th, 1939, by the name of Dorothy Gale, a most precocious twelve year old child who interviewed in all the local papers. Now won't you reconsider my offer and come visit us very soon? My son is most anxious to meet you..._

Susan thought that, surely, Dorothy must have stolen the young girl's name and tragic backstory and moved to England. After all, despite being the most attractive sort of company - having good manners, beauty, and a worldly air - Susan didn't trust Dorothy, and knew that sometimes beneath the most impressive coils there lay a snake.

"You and Albert seem to really be getting on," Dorothy said, almost encouragingly.

Susan disengaged her arm so that she could touch the railing as they descended into the underground. "I think we're friendly," she replied vaguely. "He's a nice boy."

"You must wonder why he doesn't have a beau," Dorothy assumed.

 _Because he doesn't want to attach himself and leave them alone when he dies,_ Susan thought. Out loud, she only said, "Hm? Oh, yes, I suppose. Never really came to mind." She touched an old lamp in the wall, pulled a match from her purse, and lit the wick. They would put the lamps out on their return from the meeting.

"I don't suppose, darling, you're hoping for any sort of courtship," Dorothy went on, in a rather condescending tone, lighting another lamp several paces down. "He's not looking to settle down..."

"I gathered as much..."

"I mean he doesn't want to settle down with a _woman,"_ Dorothy walked a little ahead of Susan, lighting another lamp, before turning with a remarkably victorious look on her face. "Oh, you didn't know?" she said. "Albert is one of those Oscar Wilde types, if you know what I mean."

Susan tried to find words for a reply, but none had ever prepared for her in any situation such as this. No sort of training in etiquette she'd ever endured at school covered sexual topics. What did she know? She had to learn all of that on her own, through trial and error... which now, she realized, was mostly error.

Seeking out married men like a gladiator challenges a beast in a coliseum were not a pedestal on which she could stand and gloat over another's version of immorality.

Albert was an admitted dandy, and flirted with anything that had legs, male or female. In Susan's very limited experience, her roommates in boarding school would point at the _unavailable_ onesfrom the all boy's school and whisper, "Don't bother trying to win _that_ one, he prefers musical theater."

If they didn't have interest in her, she didn't have any in them. It was a fair exchange of nothing. And Susan carried on her way without a second thought.

But now, she was being quite forced into having a second thought. And a third, and a fourth. And she simply didn't know _what_ to think, but she knew one thing for certain - It was rude of Dorothy to bring it up, plain and simple.

"I seemed to have lost my cravings for gossip," she said with a sigh. "A month ago I would have demanded all of the juicy details from you, my dear... but now I find I just don't have the stomach for it."

"I don't think you understand."

"But I really do, Dorothy." Susan said firmly. "I must have three responses - I could actively deny your accusations and ask for proof, or I can agree that I knew all along and be ambivalent to it, or even defend his choices! But I'm simply too exhausted for any discourse this conversation demands." She passed through the last entrance to the platform, where the empty tracks stretched onward into the dark.

"You're a mystery to me, Susan Pevensie," Dorothy mumbled with a light-heated air, as if she just hadn't casually outed a person whose lifestyle Susan didn't entirely understand. "How can you be so worldly and wild, and yet so content to live inside a bubble? It rivals Glinda's damn soap."

Susan pretended to chuckle at Dorothy's comment, having heard enough complaints about the Good Witch of the North (in Dorothy's wild tales of "Oz") to understand the reference. Dorothy's humor luckily meant that the exchange ended on a polite note. Though sometimes a polite English silence was actually two steps shy of _I don't give a damn what you think,_ or a friendly slap across the face.

Someone had already lit the lanterns by the door, and Susan could see Alice's silver hair through the window.

"Hello, my friends," Albert greeted them happily when they entered the station master's office. "Please, do not sing your praises yet. Wait and look about. Do you see?"

"Why Albert," Dorothy said dryly, with a pointed look at Susan, "You've been redecorating."

"It's about time, too," Alice said. "I wasn't sure how much more I could stand meeting in such a dusky place. You may be surprised that I am somewhat accustom to finery."

"None of us find that surprising," teased Hank Sr., leaning his hands heavily on his cane. They had pushed their chairs against the wall, lifting their feet off the floor. Albert had a broom in his hands, which he quickly used to move a small pile of refuse out of the center so that Dorothy and Susan could take their places by the entrance to the secondary hall that led to the loo, and - as Susan later found out - another tunnel that came out near the Morgan's flat.

"He's really stirred up the dust, my sinuses can hardly take it," Pauline muttered to her father.

Not only had Albert wiped down the walls, he had re-glued some of the peeling wallpaper. He hung a few wartime posters he'd found in an old drawer to cover some of the larger holes. The cork board had been reorganized, and the window to the ticket master's counter scrubbed clean. He wiped the soot out from inside the kerosene lamps in the walls, brightening the room as if he had used his amulet to harness the power of sunlight.

Last, but certainly not least, the windows looking from the office to the platform now sported gingham curtains.

"You've done very well for yourself, Albert," Dorothy said, with a smile. "I am not unpleased. I like gingham."

"Astonishing," he replied, "That was a compliment, if you will! Now please - may I have my amulet back? You've had it long enough, I daresay."

Dorothy leveled a rather frightening glare at him.

"I take it that it didn't work for you, either," Albert stated triumphantly.

"No, it did not."

"So... give it back."

"Only because you've asked me in front of our friends," she said evenly, pulling the small stone figure from her purse and handing it over. He accepted it with a grin, and looked at Susan.

"So?" he asked. "Mademoiselle Pevensie has not sung my praises yet."

"You've done a remarkable job," Susan replied. "But you must be very tired from all your... labor."

"Hardly," scoffed Albert, with a knowing smile, and a wink, "I'm _fighting_ fit!" But his limp was more pronounced, Susan thought, as he swept away the last of the dust and leaned the broom in the corner, running out to the platform when he spotted Wendy and Jane. Hank Jr. followed, and both of them lent each arm to escort them inside. Jane was terribly small beside Hank Jr., save the belly that swelled mightily through her plaid coat.

"I feel as if I could burst," Jane sat heavily in a chair.

"How are you feeling?" Susan asked. "I am so pleased to see you're using the cashmere stockings we found! Are they not perfect for swollen feet?"

"Good, Susan, and thank-you! I feel just wonderful. Fat but wonderful."

"You look marvelous."

"You need to come around more, I could stand to hear it more often. I'm glad you've come again today. May we count you a member yet?"

"Maybe... not just yet," Susan said this _every_ time. "I don't wish to sign any pledge or cut my palm until I'm sure you're not all just trying to murder me."

"What a terrible thing to say!" Dorothy exclaimed, suddenly touching Susan's leg in a moment of warm, genuine affection that sometimes slipped through her pomp and circumstance. "Susan, darling, you must know that we _like_ you. You know that, don't you?"

The Traveler's Society of Magical Wanderings all nodded enthusiastically, and Susan knew... she _did_ know. They liked her well enough. But Susan had very little to love left in the world, except perhaps her niece not yet born, and even then, she did not believe herself worthy to bestow love for this child when she so neglected her family long gone.

"Thank you, Dorothy," Susan replied.

"Today's topic begins with a subject we're all certainly familiar with," Alice said, "But let's revisit for Susan's sake. The marks on our wrists. I am sure you have more questions, Susan, as time goes by, it changes..."

Susan almost pulled back her sleeve, but thought better of it. They all knew what it looked like. "It is... troubling," she said. "It began as a speck, I'm sure, then had little lines all criss-cross across it, and now it seems a fully-formed star shape, like something a child cuts from paper and hangs in a window. Very... pronounced and... disturbing."

"Why is it disturbing?" Hank Sr. asked. "Those of us that of traveled have all got one."

"Shh, sp-sp-speakin' to a no-non-non-non-believer, rem-member," Hank Jr. whispered.

"I thought maybe you all called this the T-club because it was shaped like the letter T," Susan went on.

"That's the early stage," Pauline sighed without much patience. "The T stands for Travelers, it has nothing to do with what the mark looks like. Like a bruise, it varies. It grows more cross-like within an hour or so. Surely you noticed?"

Susan hadn't. Not within an hour. She had only noticed the change after a few days... maybe longer!

"And then it develops more, ah, star points, shall we say," Hank Sr. added. "Till it is as you see now."

"What if it's a terrible rash?" Susan said, and though it was a very practical and logical sort of answer, it earned stark laughter and knee slapping, and then she felt like the one with foolish beliefs, not them. Rashes were easy enough to identify. The mark was like an inked sailor's tattoo, dark and pronounced.

"It's not cancer, if that's what you're wondering," Albert scolded gently.

Susan had the grace to accept it. "No, of course not, you're right," she said with a shrug. "I just worry."

"It's the traveler's mark," Alice reminded her. "I'll say it till the day I die - we've _earned_ them! We gain them by our travels and itself lies proof that we have conquered great things. We deserve the badge," she glanced at Susan when she said this, "Even if we don't know _why_ we deserve it." She rapped her hand once on her lap, as if calling a rowdy courtroom to order, and she was the presiding judge. "Now I am far too tired and elderly to speak much else today. Anyone else care to regale us with a tale of why you deserve your mark? Hank, darling, tell us how you realized Camelot was not a fever-dream, but in fact, real."

...

After having their customary tea (Pauline brought biscuits, Hank Jr. a jar of honey) and had a fairly normal conversation about each other's lives, the meeting was over and everyone had to leave for other engagements. Wendy was going to take Jane to an appointment with her doctor, the Morgans had an evening service at the nearest Catholic church, Dorothy had a date (though she kept entirely mum about _who_ the date was with), Albert had another radiation appointment, and Susan was determined to go with him.

But first - it could not go unnoticed that Alice was looking more frail than usual. Her eyes had lost their blue luster, and her skin was thinner than ever. If she so much as tapped the back of her own hand, dark purple bruises would appear along her yellowed age spots. Susan insisted that she help hail her a cab, so that she may not need to wait by the darkening street in the chill of the evening.

And all the while, she watched. Susan's mind was so jumbled and becoming more so throughout the course of the evening. _So what if Dorothy hadn't stolen the girl's identity? What if she was the survivor of the cyclone's wreckage? Does that make her story true, or does that just make her mad? Why does it FEEL so true? When it shouldn't. It really shouldn't._

Susan held up an arm for hailing the cab, her sleeve falling away from her wrist. _What makes me so certain this is a birthmark if it can change, and many others can identify that change? Did Peter... and Lucy... and Ed... did they have one too?_

Alice smiled gratefully at her. "Thank you, my dear."

Susan nodded, numbly. _Why, or how, did we even stumble into each other? Why did Lucy and Peter not tell me about this group? Why wasn't Edmund a member? What made Edmund step away from something that he believed in? He believed in Narnia, so why was he not won over by Alice? She's no White Witch._

Susan's breath caught in her throat.

 _Why am I thinking of a witch, a fictional one at that, as if she is a memory?_

Dorothy waved to them, when another car, not a cab, stopped at the corner. She leaned in, kissed the driver, and then ran around to jump into the passenger seat. As they drove by, Susan caught a glimpse of the man's face. He was kindly looking, mustached and middle-aged, but there was nothing mysterious about him. It was just a beau, as simple as that.

Perhaps her own lifestyle made her look on other's potential romantic conquests as something to be scrutinized.

"We'll see you next weekend, then?" Jane asked Susan. "Please say you'll come to my little dinner party."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Susan said. Her smile was genuine, but there was sadness in the corners.

"You'll be so happy to meet my nephew, Tom," Wendy said, with a motherly twinkle in her eye, "Michael's son, Jane's cousin... he's very handsome, and very charismatic."

"Ah," Susan nodded, trying to sound enthusiastic.

"Oh, don't worry," Wendy said quickly. "We won't make you uncomfortable. It's just a small gathering of family." She was making it painfully obvious that she considered Susan a member of the family, the sister of the fallen father of her unborn grandchild. When she was young, Susan had always imagined someone would one day call her _Aunt Susee._ It had a nice ring to it.

"Thank you," she said.

"Don't fret! Something good is coming," Jane interjected. "There are good omens today."

"Oh really?" Susan asked with bemusement. "And what are they?"

"Winds in the east," Jane looked up at the sky. "And the ship sails."

Susan's smile faltered. Nice moments with her new friends always seemed tainted by mentioning magic.

"Look at the sky tonight, my dear," Wendy tried to clarify. "Peter's sailing closely this time of year. You'll see it when the moon is out."

"I'll look for it," Susan said politely. She waved goodbye to them as they took their own cab.

For some odd reason, her memories began to dwell painfully on her lunch-time dates in the past. She felt dirty, unworthy. All the fumbling about to try and catch sunrays in the palm of her hand. It never worked, and now she was left with inner demons, extinguishing the light.

 _Why, for heaven's sake, did Jane and Peter not tell each other how they felt before he died?_ Susan thought angrily. _Why is it so bloody unfair that Jane will never know how much my brother probably loved her. He would only sleep with a person he knew he was in love with. He wasn't anything like me, sleeping with anything that looked even remotely unavailable. Jane was not a conquest. She would have been his wife._

There was a figure across the street, a darker shape amongst shadows.

A pair of green, reptilian-like eyes stared intensely at... Alice, appearing out of the alley on Albert's arm. Hungrily, curiously.

 _Why is he staring,_ Susan thought. _STOP IT!_

A cab came around the corner and lit them up with headlamps, just as Susan was opening her mouth to call out to the stranger across the road. The cab stopped and Albert opened the door for Alice.

"Goodnight, my sweet," Alice called benevolently. Susan trotted to join Albert's side and see her off, smiling down distractedly at the elderly woman. Her parent's parents had not lived long, and she did not really recall ever knowing her grandparents. Alice was probably the closest thing she'd ever get to a grandmother, Professor Kirk the closest she had ever gotten to a grandfather... Would they not have made a handsome couple, Digory Kirk and Alice Little-Whitmore?

 _Stop it, Susan! These people are not dolls to be played with and hearts to trample on your road to glory,_ Susan thought angrily to herself. _You can't change if you don't start somewhere. And you DO want to change, don't you? Don't you want friends?_

"Goodnight, Miss Alice, I'll see you soon," Susan replied softly, shutting the cab door. It pulled away from the curb with a cough.

"I forgot my cane again," Albert said quickly. "I'll only be a moment." He hobbled off quickly.

Suddenly nervous, Susan looked across the street again. The stranger stepped a little further out from beneath the building. A young man, maybe a year younger than she. Wild, curly hair, under a battered old hat, and wearing a patchwork jacket over suspenders, a striped shirt, and brown trousers. A trail of smoke came from his hand where there was likely a chewed up cigar. His eyes looked entirely normal now. "Excuse me," he called out, politely. "Can you tell me the time?"

Susan shook her head. "I did not carry a watch today."

"Time, time, time," he replied, "If only we all had more of it."

It was a physical pain that began in her belly, at first, and then spread rapidly up her spine and into her mind. Susan Pevensie felt her grief all over again, and it was trying to become a migraine.

"Yes," she replied quietly, too quietly for a person across the street to hear, "Some don't have enough."

"That is, unfortunately, true," replied the young man. He stood still, and kept staring.

"Can I help you with something?" Susan asked stiffly.

"No, I'm just wandering about."

"Were you looking for someone?"

"I was finding someone," he said, and he suddenly gave her a huge smile. He had very nice teeth. "It's nice to find people instead of losing them, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't know," Susan replied harshly. She took a step backwards towards the alley, intending to join Albert in the hidden tunnels and not stay a moment longer than necessary with an uncomfortably chatty stranger.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to be rude."

Susan found herself more annoyed than fearful. "I am sure you couldn't possibly understand," she said, "But it is very uncomfortable to be a woman watched by a man across a darkening road."

"You were watching me, too," replied the man.

"The worst a woman might do to you here in London is catch your eye," Susan exclaimed. "But the worst a man can do is unspeakable violence. Surely you've read the papers! I do not appreciate your approach, however non-threatening it may seem to you."

His expression changed. "I'm so sorry. I didn't think about it like that. I'll leave."

" _I found it!"_ Albert emerged from the alley with his cane, and he leaned more heavily upon it. "Just where I left it, in the umbrella stand Hank Jr. put by the waste bin." He gazed across the street just in time to see the fleeting figure disappear into the growing darkness. "Who was _that?_ Someone to spy on us? Someone wants to join the tea club?"

"I don't think so," Susan said uncomfortably. "He was looking at Alice and asked me for the time. He may have been a drunk." Even as she said it, she knew he wasn't drunk, just odd.

"Looking at her how? Like he wants to lift her wallet? Or found her attractive?"

"Neither, like he was sad to see her," Susan shrugged. "I don't know. Are you ready to go to your appointment? Do you feel all right today?"

"A little sick, but I'm managing." Albert gave her another winning smile. "For being so prickly, you're a very good friend to me, you know."

"I've never really had friends. I'm practicing on you."

"I welcome the attention. I'm horribly narcissistic."

"That makes two of us, then."

"A match made in purgatory."

"Do you believe in purgatory?"

"I believe in a lot of places! But it seemed too harsh to say a match made in hell. And heaven might come across romantically."

"Heaven's all right," Susan replied with an unusual laugh. "But you're right. Purgatory is more fitting for us."

"Then come, my little monster, on the road to forgiveness and heavenly splendor! Take my arm and let us pretend we are a real pair having a night on the town."

As they walked towards the tram stop, Susan glanced over her shoulder, and could have sworn she saw a trail of smoke emitting from the alley. But then she saw a few street workers, disposing of waste into a bin, and a cat running across the street. Perfectly normal city-doings and nothing out of the ordinary.

...

That night, Susan kept vigil by her window. She felt foolish to do so, but curiosity won out, and she told Wendy she would. _Curiosity is key..._ Maybe a few months ago she couldn't care about keeping such promises when they really weren't promises, but she would feel terrible if Wendy asked her about it and she had to lie.

"Maybe consciences can be regrown," Susan thought out loud.

Then she saw the ship. Well, clouds shaped like a ship. A perfect outline in the blue clouds, glinting with the full moon. She could see the prow, the full sails, the masts, and bridge. Impressive, really.

"I'll be damned if that is not a cloud formation that looks just like a ship," she laughed suddenly.

Then suddenly, the clouds melted off, and the real prow emerged. Dark wood reflected the starlight and dark shadows scrambled about deck, tugging ropes, following instructions, lighting yellow lanterns amongst the diamond studded night sky. The fog drifted away from the masts and revealed the canvas sails snapping, lifted with celestial winds. A boy stood at the helm, wearing a hat far too big for himself.

"My god," Susan whispered hoarsely. "My god, a ship. A _ship._ I'm dreaming! I must be dreaming!" she pinched herself hard, in the arm. It was still there, sailing, the wood groaning as it propelled closer. A ship was flying in the sky, pulling in front of the moon, a black silhouette.

"I'm dreaming!" Susan repeated, and then she slammed her head against her window frame.

 _Crack!_ Her skull throbbed, and she put a hand to her hairline. There would be a bruise tomorrow, and then she would know. _I have to know._

But the pain did not wake her up, because she wasn't sleeping. She was awake, alive, and seeing something magical from her window... and then the captain, a tiny figure at the helm, took off his hat and waved it in her direction. A friendly wave from a boy in the sky.

On a ship.

 _In the sky._

If this was true, maybe the rest of it was true, too. And it was too late to change anything.

Susan bent her head and wept fiercely, her grief overwhelming her entirely. Crying loudly and without restraint, she scrambled desperately to her feet and unbolted the window, throwing it open. She leaned out, dangerously far, and called loudly.

"Who are you?" she screamed.

"I'm the greatest boy who ever lived," replied the shadow, his voice a minuscule shout over a great distance. Susan strained to hear it and swallowed her sobs.

"Come and talk to me, won't you?" she yelled back.

"Talk to a lady like you? Never!" the boy raised an arm, and the ship veered suddenly away, growing smaller and smaller, until it looked just like a bird flying into the moon.

Susan nearly tipped and fell out of her window. Gasping, she crawled out of the windowseat and fell to the floor in a heap, sobbing. _It's real,_ she thought, over and over. _If it's real, then... Narnia might be real too. Oh, god, what have I done? What have I done?_

"Please forgive me, Lucy," Susan pulled a quilt down from her bed and buried her face in it. "Please forgive me, please forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Oh god. What have I done?"

...

The following morning, Susan left home without makeup. She had not done this since... well, since she was a child, really. She even wore make up to the funeral of her family, for the sake of keeping up her appearance in public.

She went to work in a fog, transferring calls in a dull voice.

"Please hold, I will connect you. Room 43, call from Mr. Bowman? Thank you, please hold..."

"Susan?" the boss leaned into the small room bearing an unreadable expression. "Can you let Betty take your calls for a moment?"

Susan turned to Betty, and was surprised by what she saw. Betty, the well-behaved, clean-cut Betty, looked as if she had raided Susan's closet. Susan could tell she was wearing the latest underwear fashion, her bra almost cone-shaped beneath her dark red dress. The shoulder pads and exceptionally tight belt gave her a perfect hourglass figure. She was smoking so much now that she smoked indoors, too, and the smell clung to her. Susan relied on a cigarette or two whenever she was bored or needed something to curb her anxiety, but she never did it _indoors._ Betty's mouth was hard with bright lipstick. Even her legs were shaven beneath her clear nylons.

Susan hadn't _noticed_ Betty much at work, she was too preoccupied with her own mind... of the Tea Club... of her new (possible) friendships. But Betty had certainly been noticing _her._ Betty was trying to imitate Susan... the old Susan. And Susan realized that it destroyed everything she liked about Betty... her goodness, her giggles, her innocence.

"Betty," she said, trying not to show her shock, "Would you...?"

"Sure thing, doll," Betty patted her hand. All right... so maybe Susan was taking too much credit. Surely not all of her goodness was destroyed because Susan was determined to be a bad influence. A person's clothes shouldn't reflect what was truly on the inside, right?

Maybe _that_ was just another tragedy of Susan Pevensie. She placed so much value on a person's outfit and appearance, and used it to reflect the emptiness of _her_ soul, that she assumed everyone else was just as empty.

"Thank you, Betty," she looked down at the nicotine stain on her right ring finger. "And Betty," she added, as an afterthought, "I'm sorry about that day. I..."

"What day?" Betty asked quizzically.

"The day I made you keep trying my cigarettes, out by the back alley. When I made you smoke until you threw up. It was cruel of me. Horribly cruel. I am so sorry. Please forgive me."

Betty withdrew her hand quickly, balling up a fist so that the stain wasn't visible. "I'm sorry?" she replied, her tone hard. "You... you're sorry? You said that all the fashionable women smoked. That there was nothing sexier than a woman lighting up with a man, and lighting his first."

"Susan," said the boss, embarrassingly, "You're... uh... your sister-in-law is here to see you? She said it's urgent."

"My who?" Susan said distractedly, "Um, yes, of course, I'm coming." She stood up from the switchboard and took her purse and coat from the hat tree.

Betty was staring at her with such a look of utter betrayal and disappointment, then turned and said out-loud to Peg, who worked beside her. "Susan thinks she is our goddess," she said mockingly. "And we must all be recreated in her image. And then as soon we do, she turns on us and becomes jealous. Imitation is her favorite flattery until we do it better or she's just disappointed in how _her_ life is going."

The boss shut the door quickly, and Susan had a feeling in her gut that she would never return. This was her last day at the switchboards.

"I didn't realize you had a sister-in-law," said the boss, trying to make up for the uncomfortable fact that they both heard what Betty had said.

Susan hadn't realized, either, and she would have smirked and said so if she could. "Mhm," she replied absently.

The hotel would never let visiting friends go behind the counter at the hotel, only family in an emergency situation. She had a guess about who needed to see her, and couldn't ignore the anxiety fluttering in her heart.

"Here you are," he opened the door from the back rooms into the space beside the hotel check-in counter, where the entrance to the coat check-in and staff offices were.

Susan found Jane, as hefty and adorable as ever, leaning on the counter and clutching a purse in her hands. It shocked Susan's core to finally have different threads of her life cross over... the Tea Club always felt like a sort of dream, a hidden-away place. Something magical you can only get to through a tunnel underground. Alice's wonderland.

It never seemed like anything could touch her real life, the work at the hotel and her boarding house with Mary Ann and Molly. But then last night she saw the ship from her bedroom window. Today she had an almost-sister-in-law leave the club and show up at work. Worlds colliding. A practice, and not a theory, of a meteor collision to make a new star in the heavens. And it felt sort of... right.

"Jane, darling," Susan greeted, coming around the edge of the counter and embracing Jane sincerely, careful not to squeeze too tightly. "Whatever is the matter?"

"It's Alice," Jane whispered, her voice tight with tears. "She fell this morning. They think she broke her hip, her leg, her pelvic bone... It's bad, Susan. She's dying. She wanted to see you. Will you come say goodbye?"

Susan pulled Jane into her arms once more, briefly, and then kissed her cheek. Even Jane was surprised at the sudden physical affection. Not very English of her.

 _Maybe Narnian,_ Susan thought. "Let's go," she said, turning to the boss. "Will you get us a cab?"

"No need," said Jane, "I told mine to wait outside. I knew you would come."

Susan linked her arm through Jane's and they walked towards the front doors. "Oh, I won't be back," Susan called over her shoulder to her boss. His mouth dropped open in surprise. "You mean today?" he asked.

"I mean never," Susan couldn't believe the words that came out of her mouth. _I'll join Archie in America,_ she thought. _I'll marry Jane's cousin Tom and raise nine children. I'll sell Peter and Ed's flat and use the proceeds to take Albert on one last world tour. I'll get a job at the Red Cross. I'll live in the abandoned tube stations. I don't care. Anything but here._

"How long do you think she has?" Susan asked Jane as she held the cab door open for her and helped her inside.

Jane sat back exhaustedly, rubbing her belly where the baby kicked the most. "Back to the hospital," she told the driver. Susan shut her door and settled in beside her.

"She..." Jane paused, and sighed again. " _Oof,_ sorry, baby is squirmy today. Ugh."

"It's all right."

"She's so severely injured that they've had to keep her sedated. She's in a lot of pain, and bleeding internally, and there's nothing they can do about it."

"What happened?"

"I think she fell down her stairs at home." Jane choked up. "Her son, Andrew Jr., was stopping by for breakfast, and found her, and... he said he thought she was dead already. Fortunately he had the good sense to call an ambulance and not move her body. It could have been much worse. Though... not much more worse. He called Hank immediately and he phoned the rest of us. We didn't have your number..."

"It's okay..."

"Alice has been waiting, I think. Waiting so that she can say a proper goodbye to each one of us."

Susan rubbed a fist in her eye to stop tears before they could come. "She's a special person. And very brave."

"Alice is the glue that holds us all together," Jane spoke absently, more to herself than Susan. "Without her... what will we do?"

"She would want us to keep meeting," Susan replied stoutly. "So that is what we will do!"

"She'd be so happy to hear you say that."

"Then I will tell her," Susan said. "I promise."

...

...

* * *

Author's Note

* * *

I can't believe I haven't updated this story for months! I am so sorry! It's literally taken me that long to write this chapter. This is one of the most _dense_ stories I've ever written. Please review and let me know what you think. There are all kinds of amazing things that are going to happen, things you won't want to miss.

I have the entire story planned out, piece by piece, chapter by chapter, outlined to the tenth degree, and so I am sorry I cannot take or include all suggestions. However there is a decent amount at the end where reader vote will come into play about how you see Susan's story ending.

This book is really a love letter to all the Susans out there that have fallen from grace and need redemption, and taking Lewis's suggestion that it's perfectly all right with him for fans to try and come up with their own endings. I think that the important thing is staying true to his vision of Susan - that her fault was not that she just loved make up (that itself is not a bad thing) but that the superficiality was _all_ she loved. Susan was not guilty of being female and beautiful, she was guilty of idolatry. It's one of the most misunderstood passages of the Last Battle. People assume Lewis was punishing Susan because she liked lipstick and parties, but it was not punishment. Remember - the Susan of "The Horse and His Boy" _still_ liked parties, Princes, and was famed for her beauty throughout the land (so much so that dignitaries from far-off kingdoms sought her hand in marriage). This Susan wasn't punished because she was still a whole person. She still loved Aslan, her family, her kingdom, and the boy that she took in (Prince Cor) and loved like her own son.

It was when she returned that Susan _only_ liked her lipstick and parties as opposed to her _family,_ and _Narnia,_ and all the VALUES that accompany it. She was unnecessarily harsh to Lucy (Fancy you still playing those games we used to play as children!) showing how indifference can also be very cruel and flippant, the exact opposite of gentle. The things that she valued above your own sister's feelings really show how much she had changed. That change is what Lewis cautions against. He didn't want her to stay Queen Susan the Gentle to keep her weak and passive. Gentleness was one of Susan's virtues because she was smart and kind and knew how to say the right thing to make a valid point, but she did it without hurting others. She wasn't just gentle because she was a peacemaker. She was gentle because she was kind. "Fancy you still playing those games!" was showing that Susan was no longer kind and gentle. That was the real tragedy! Not that she liked make up.

When Susan stripped away her values, all that was left was a shell. And I am feeling very determined to help her find her way back to becoming Queen Susan the gentle.


	6. Valley of the Shadow of Death

_The Tea Club_

 _a conglomerate fan fiction novel by Mya Sanders_

 _..._

There is a secret society in London called the Tea Club. The mission; to find magic in the real world and harness power to return to lands visited only by magic, and if that is impossible, find solidarity among others who have experienced magic and know it to be real. The members are Dorothy Gale, Alice Whitmore, Wendy Darling, and many more. Reeling from the death of her family in a railway accident, Susan Pevensie is the logical choice for the club's newest member.

 _..._

 _..._

* * *

Little announcement to my readers; I am re-editing the first three or four chapters and re-uploading them. Here is why! Since this story is very intricate with a lot of moving pieces, there are plenty of little mistakes and plot holes that I a working on fixing. (For example, Alice's son is in his sixties but I accidentally described him in this chapter as a "young" man. Fortunately I caught this mistake before uploading. Also, I think I went a little overboard with Susan's... uh... sexual encounters in the first chapter. I did not mean to be crass, I wanted to illustrate just how _little_ she cared about true intimacy, but I think the details were too much! I re-read it later and blushed! So I toned some of those moments down. As I do this, I am re-uploading the edited chapters. You'll find the new chapter below (chapter six!) and chapters one, two, and likely three (by the time I upload this) will be edited. If you care for a re-read, there you are. If you are arriving to this story for the very first time, you're getting a better version!

Much love, as always, to my little tea-drinkers.

Pippin

...

...

* * *

...

...

Chapter Six

Valley of the Shadow of Death

...

...

* * *

Susan never liked hospitals. There was a cold, sickly smell in the air that she just couldn't quite place. It lingered, and it touched the bare skin of her arms and raised goosebumps. She spent enough time in them already now that she took it upon herself to attend Albert's appointments, and she felt bitter towards the gray walls and reflective floor for hosting her again. It shouldn't be like this. This should not be the final home of a woman that, so sweet and charming, made Susan feel at ease on their first meeting, when Susan still wasn't sure if she hadn't been kidnapped or not. A respected elder who had refined manners but never hesitated saying what she wanted to say.

The world would be less wondrous without Alice.

"Come on," Jane took her hand and tucked it in her arm. Susan would not say how much this meant to her. Hell, even her own cousin Eustace, and Jill (who was very much like a cousin) had perished from the horrible, horrible train crash. The freak accident took her family and left none except for Eustace's parents, Clarence and Alberta. They did not attend the service for the Pevensies. They wrote a card to Susan instead and offered their condolences, and told her that the funeral for Eustace was "a small affair". This did not mean there weren't any guests, it just meant Susan was not invited.

Susan had been told by the constable that it was difficult to tell, at times, who had been thrown from the train in the crash and who had been on it. But from what they could tell, Eustace and Jill and Lucy and her parents were waiting on the platform, Peter and Edmund were on the train. Lucy may have been with them in the car, but it seemed unlikely... due to where her body was found. And how broken it was. The train derailed and the cars were broken open, spilling bodies and luggage in a radius unheard of. As if spread by an other worldly force.

Albert had predicted the opposite, perhaps they were the ones coming in on the train, and Peter and Edmund were waiting for them. But it didn't matter, for even the policeman's story was pure conjecture. The point was, they all _died._ Wherever they stood... or sat... it was their final resting place.

Jane and her child were the closest thing Susan had to family anymore.

"I am looking forward to next weekend, the dinner party, if you're still having it," Susan said warmly.

"We may..." Jane hesitated. "If Alice passes away, I am sure that there will be a service in the morning. Our dinner party may be a very small affair. Just the family, of course, you, me, and Mum. The Tea Club if they wish. No matchmaking, I promise."

Susan breathed a sigh of relief, touched to be part of the affair at all.

They approached a small waiting room. Wendy was sitting in a chair already with a hanky clutched in one hand. She and another man in his early sixties rose to greet them. Jane embraced him like an old friend and said some muffled words of comfort.

"Girls," Wendy greeted. "I am so pleased you came, Susan." She, too, hugged her close as if she were her favorite niece just dropping by for a visit. "This is Andrew Whitmore, Jr. Alice's son. Andrew, this is Susan Pevensie, another club member."

Susan and Andrew Jr. shook hands. Andrew Jr. looked every inch an Alice offspring, ruddy skin but pale, watery-blue eyes. He had a thick head of silver hair, a haunted look behind his eyes, but a pleasant smile. Susan wondered if he knew the real purpose behind the club or if he thought it was just about tea and friendship.

"I am very happy to meet you," he said. "I have heard nothing but wonderful things about you."

"Thank you. I... truly am so sorry. I am a changed person for her generosity and kindness."

"She would probably say the same thing about you all," Andrew Jr. said to the three of them. "I think my mother has only lived so long for the joy that this little club brings her. Miss Pevensie, it would be an honor if you stepped in... and... said your goodbyes. Albert and the younger Morgans have come and gone, Mr. Morgan is saying his farewell now."

"As long as she's not too tired," Susan said hastily.

"It's all right. You may go in."

Susan clutched at Jane's hand. "Come with me," she said, urgently.

"Mum?" Jane asked. "You did not need me?"

"I... I said goodbye already," Wendy replied quietly.

"Then of course," Jane gave her hand a squeeze. "Is there something wrong?"

Susan waited until another man entered the lobby and began speaking animatedly with Andrew Jr. They seemed very happy to see one another, despite the newcomer being much younger and strangely dressed. As soon as their conversation rose in volume, she felt comfortable enough to explain. "I just," she whispered, "I am not myself when another is on the threshold of death. I can hardly think of anything but... Peter, and Ed, and Lu. Will you help me?"

Jane nodded wholeheartedly. "It's very brave of you to ask. Let's go in together." Jane pushed past the slightly ajar door, guiding Susan in. Hank Morgan Sr. was seated beside the bed, holding Alice's hand.

"Well hello, dolls," he greeted in that unorthodox, American way. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes! Alice, it's our poorly-magically-adjusted adoptees."

"Oh," whispered a hoarse, delicate voice from the bed and a mess of silver hair done in a long braid. Alice looked every inch an Old Hallow's Eve mask, shrunken and transparent, her mouth forming a perfect O even when she was not speaking. All the light and life had gone out of her until the skeleton and bits of flesh remained. It was horrifying, and it made Susan so full of anxiety that she clutched Jane's hand as if it were a lifeline.

"Hello, Alice, we've come to say hello and give you get-well wishes," Jane supplied. She and Susan approached the side of the bed, Jane leading Susan like a child on the verge of a temper tantrum and only just beginning to drag her feet.

"I'll be... leaving you now," Hank said slowly, his eyes blinking rapidly.

"A goodbye kiss?" Alice whispered hoarsely.

"Only if my lady commands," Hank responded gallantly, his eyes lighting up.

Alice gave the scarcest nod and shut her eyes, her chin trembling as she smiled. Hank gave her a gentle, but audible kiss on her cheek, then kissed the back of her hand. "So long, just for now, Miss Alice," he said. Her eyes remained shut as if she had fallen asleep, and Hank left the room, shoulders burdened with the gravitas of grief.

Jane nodded at Susan. "Susan had a lovely thought today," she said helpfully.

Alice's eyes crept open sleepily, then shut again. "Tell me," she whispered.

"We're going to keep meeting!" Susan burst, like a school-child caught in a lie and suddenly overcome with truth. "I mean, we'll make sure the club carries on. I thought... it was important."

Alice sighed happily and for a moment, it really did seem that she had fallen asleep. Then the blue of her eyes was visible in a thin slit. "Hmm," she said. "The medicine they give you do really... sleep you... keep you..."

"We want to wish you good health, and we're saying prayers for you," Jane said. "We'll keep everything running ship-shape till you return."

Alice made a little _huff_ sound that was supposed to be laughter. "You stay so positive."

"Speaking of ship-shape," Susan said, finally feeling brave enough to let go of Jane and sit in the seat Hank had been occupying. "Alice, I had to tell you. I took Wendy's advice. I saw Peter Pan's ship... in the sky, last night."

"Oh Susan!" Jane whispered.

"There, there, there," Alice mumbled. "You saw something real."

"It seemed very real. I do not think I was dreaming. I mean, perhaps I was. But I've woken up now, I know I saw the boy, and the ship, and I don't know what it all means. I don't really know what I believe. But I believe _something_."

"Listen, you sweet girl," Alice opened both eyes and shifted her chin ever-so-slightly to gaze levelly at Susan. "Faith will come later. It takes practice. But if you must define your _something,_ choose what your family believed. Narnia. Aslan. The Other Places may come later. Choose your family. Make their belief yours. You understand?"

Susan bent her head at Alice's hand and tried not to cry. "I understand. And I will. I promise. Somehow."

"Good, good," Alice turned to Jane, pain tugging at all her bony features. "My dear," she said, "I am so very sorry I won't see your sweet child come to this world."

"Yes, you will," Jane said heartily. "Don't talk like that."

"I am an old woman," Alice replied, "I know when I'm finished." She seemed to be more lucid now, stringing her words together more coherently. "You are going to be a wonderful mother. Lean on your family. It's not easy being a mother alone. I remember being... shunned, spit on, and bullied for divorcing Andrew... senior, my husband. He was in the wrong and yet I was socially crucified for it."

Jane reached for her other hand and held it gently.

"You are having a child out of wedlock, and there's really nothing that offends the English more," Alice went on. "Your scarlet letter will not be a mere badge, but a living, breathing child that carries on after you. There will be whispers about you, whispers the child will likely hear. She may wonder at rumor but you're the one who will live with this knowingly. The dirty looks at the grocer's, the judgment from purists, the other young mothers gossiping amongst themselves and ostracizing you."

Jane nodded heavily. _She must experience this so much already,_ Susan thought. _And I thought my help purchasing good socks somehow made her pregnancy worthy of my attention. How selfish I have been._

"I urge you to _embrace_ this part of your life," Alice continued, her voice growing stronger. "It was _your_ choice to have relations before marriage. It's your choice to not send your child away to a convent or an orphanage. It's your choice to raise the child as a good Christian. You are strong and capable of your convictions, and strong enough to stand by your choices. You don't have to excuse them. But _live_ with them, and keep your head high. Let your mother and grandmother help you when the burdens are overwhelming. That's what us ladies are here for." Alice softened and suddenly remembered that she may not be among them. "Remember, dear."

Jane pressed a hanky to her eyes with the hand that was not currently holding Alice's. First to one eye, then the other, a polite dab that did little to prevent the outpouring of tears. Seeing Jane falter in keeping a cheerful attitude gave Susan strength. It made her want to help for reasons other than her own comfort or ego.

"She's right," Susan whispered quietly. "We're here to help. Anytime."

"Thank you," Jane said. "Alice, thank you... you're a fairy godmother I think."

"Wrong story," Alice let out a real laugh, a sharp one and short, but real nevertheless. Then she coughed, wet and thick. "Oh girls," she said. "It is so wonderful to see you. But I know you are here to say goodbye. Each friend coming in like a parade is only making me sad to go!"

"You're not gone yet," Susan barked.

"Oh, bless you, child," Alice whispered. "Is this goodbye, then?"

"Maybe only for a little while," Susan touched her hand gently, and Jane took the other.

"We love you, Alice," Jane wept.

"Yes, we do, truly," Susan admitted, her tears less of grief, and more of the shame that she could not have loved sooner.

"How I hate to miss anyone," Alice whispered.

As if on cue backstage and simply awaiting his entrance, her son pulled the door open carefully once more. "My dear mother," he said jovially, "Have I got a surprise for you."

"Andrew, can I handle another? My stairs were surprise enough," Alice replied.

Jane and Susan both laughed through a sob in unison, and withdrew their hands. It was like her to be kind, and full of laughter, even in the most tragic circumstances. But it still seemed wrong to laugh even when she wanted to be laughed at, even if their goodbyes were over, and it was time to bow gracefully out.

"You're a regular comic," Andrew said, opening the door a little further. "Look who managed to cross over."

The young man from the hall stepped in.

Susan felt a chill race along her spine. She knew him. Curly hair, a battered old hat, a striped shirt beneath a patchwork jacket. Startling green eyes in an otherwise ordinary and bland face.

It was the man that had been watching Alice from the alleyway. The one that had been speaking loudly with Andrew Jr. while she and Jane conversed. She had not realized it was him, and yet, here he was, as if he belonged.

"Who..." she began, when Alice let out something between a laugh and a wail.

"Chess!" she cried. "It can't be you, it can't, it can't," and then the young man was nearly running Susan over to get to her side, gently embracing her even as frail as she looked inside the hospital bed, and muttering quiet assurances amidst Alice's sobs.

"Chess," she was crying, "It can't be you, I tried, don't you understand? I tried to come back, I did..."

"It wasn't your fault," said the young man in her silver hair. "It wasn't your fault. I promise. I'll explain everything."

Jane and Susan looked at each other in bewilderment.

Andrew Jr. beckoned them out, and they followed like dutiful school children. He pulled the door in behind them, but did not shut it all the way.

"That's Chess," he said, "One of my mum's old friends. From Wonderland."

"Oh," Susan exclaimed.

Susan recalled Alice telling a story about an incredible game of Chess being played between Red and White Queens... or was it a Queen of Hearts and a White Knight? Was this stranger some sort of chess piece come to life? Maybe he was the White Knight she spoke of. Or a Bishop.

"The timing of Providence is not to be reckoned with," Andrew Jr. went on. "My mother has longed for one last glimpse of Wonderland, and here he is."

So Andrew Jr. _did_ know of, and more importantly believe in, his mother's magical travels.

Realizing that yet another person wholeheartedly trusted magic to be true made Susan almost less certain of her own newfound belief. And the fact that that... that _person_ comforting Alice just now was funny looking _because_ he was from another world... it made Susan fluttery with shock. As if she just brushed shoulders with a famous actress or singer.

"Isn't that just wonderful!" Jane breathed. "My god! To see him... now... after all these years."

Singing a boy on a ship from a distance was one thing... it could always be chalked up to a hallucination if it came down to it, even when she knew it wasn't. And she was the only one who saw it from her window, Wendy and Jane relied on her truthfulness when she said that she saw Peter Pan and believed. But she could always go back on her word. It was a fallback. She could see Peter Pan, but she could say that she lied in a moment of doubt. She could say she was only drunk in a moment of cruelty. She could say it was nothing and let them be damned.

"How did he manage it?" Jane was asking.

"It seems some sort of spell has been lifted," Andrew Jr. explained. "Though I don't much understand the particulars. I'm not a traveler myself, see. I've always left the explaining part to my mother's experience."

Susan couldn't possibly go back to her old self now, not at daylight in a hospital corridor with a joyous, sobbing woman on her deathbed. This group of friends _all_ saw the young man named Chess. She could never lie about this moment or feign drunkenness or a hallucinatory sickness, or claim it was all a fairy story made up by her baby sister. They were grown ups in a real building that smelt of death and felt like ice, and if she ever questioned what happened here today, a dozen people could tell her differently.

She felt trapped in something she hadn't been stuck in for a long time; a real commitment to something unreal.

The stranger's voice came from Alice's room. "Andrew," Chess called sharply, "Please come."

Andrew Jr. went white as a sheet and rushed back inside. Jane reached over and clutched at Susan's hand again. Together, they sunk down side by side in the chairs along the wall beside Wendy.

Two Darlings and two Pevensies... the youngest Frances-Pevensie-to-be blissfully unaware in the womb.

"Do you think this is it?" Susan whispered, her chest physically in pain from the heaving cries that wanted to emerge, but she kept at bay with a hand on her heart. "Do you... do you think she's afraid?"

Jane shook her head. "I can't bear to think of it."

Albert came loping down the corridor at a crooked, but speedy gait. "I came back as soon as I could," he exclaimed, and Susan rose to greet him. In a continual show of her surprising physical affection, she threw her arms around his neck and embraced him. Fitting perfectly in his arms as if he were a pocket made just for her, he embraced in return without hesitating a whit, petting the back of her head as if she were his favorite doll to fuss over.

"There, there, Miss Pevensie," he said kindly, "I'm not going any where just yet."

Susan pulled back and noticed that he was unnaturally pale. "I'm sorry," she said, brushing at her eyes, "We're all so drawn out and weary. Come sit down before you fall down."

"How are you, Albert?" Wendy said pointedly.

Albert sat between Jane and Susan, and put a long arm around each of them. "I am doing all right, thank you."

"You don't look very well."

"Ah," Albert said. "Well, excuse my language, but cancer's a rotten bastard, and there's no two ways about it."

"I hoped things were going better," Wendy sighed. "My dear boy. I am so sorry."

"It's not getting better," Albert replied, his eyes sparkling with amusement as Susan's head began to swing back and forth between them. "But they can't take my dashing good looks, so there's something."

"You knew?" Susan asked Wendy. "I am so relieved."

Wendy tilted her head from side to side to indicate both a yes and no. "I knew by proxy. I knew Albert was ill. I called his mother and we spoke about it. And I'm afraid I do not keep any secrets from Jane, even if they are not mine to keep. Since then I tried to... well, play the peacemaker. Dorothy gave him _such_ a difficult time about the amulet. I tried to interject as gently as I could."

"I remember," Susan realized. "I think... it was the second time I visited the Tea Club. You kept standing up for him." She turned to Albert. "I am glad it's not as secret as I thought... it didn't seem right for you to go through all of this alone."

Jane sat up a little straighter. "Speaking of which... where _is_ Dorothy?"

The three of them fell into silence.

"She should be here," Susan said. "Why isn't she here?"

"Did we forget to call her?" Jane asked timidly.

"No!" Albert burst. "I called her _first_ thing after Hank Sr. called me. I figured she would at least arrive after I went to my radiation appointment."

"Did you speak with her? What did she say?" Jane asked.

"I didn't. I left a message with her... um... house-guest."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Wendy said, "We know she's living with her beau, there's no reason to try and hide it because I am old and worn out of young people's escapades. Who would I tell, anyhow? Except Jane?"

"I was just trying to be polite," Albert giggled. "Not leave you out because you're not our age."

"Still," Jane exclaimed, "She should be here. It's positively horrid that she isn't."

"We mustn't jump to conclusions," Wendy said. "Maybe she was held up."

"Literally," Albert added, "By highway men. Robbers."

"A parade," Susan offered.

"Nuns!" Jane screeched. The three of them fell apart into quiet giggles, borderline hysteria that could not choose between grief, worry for their missing club member, and irreverent coping tendencies.

"Oh, children," Wendy sighed. "How heartless you are."

This sobered them up quickly enough, and they fell into silence. A doctor sped by wearing a white coat, and went into Alice's room.

After a few moments, the unmistakable sound of high-heels plinked and plonked down a hallway, turned a corner, and there was Dorothy Gale. She was dressed in a handsome burgundy velvet dress, once again Victorian in nature complete with black lace at her throat and the hint of a bustle. Susan had always wondered at her old-fashioned choices, and soon came to realize it reflected more on her believed social status in _Oz,_ not England.

She looked positively joyous and radiant, and she was holding a small potted rose in her hand. It was a unique variety, _Ferdinand Pichard,_ a white rose with light red stripes that looked like the strokes of a paintbrush. It was not something you could just pick up at any flower shop, it had only been bred for the first time in France twenty-nine years ago.

Susan only knew it because her mother received a cutting from her father as a birthday gift, and she had cherished it. When it began to wilt, she dried the petals and kept them as potpourri.

"I bring a gift for our matriarch," Dorothy flounced in and plopped down happily across the aisle from them in another hard chair. "Look. It took simply _ages_ to find this. I intended it as an ordinary present, of course, but I did not want to wait till her next birthday, especially with her feeling so poorly. I thought I'd bring it today instead. Remember the story she told about the Queen's roses? How the white roses were painted red to subdue her wrath?"

They stared at her, blankly.

"Why are you all so gloomy?" Dorothy pouted. "I thought it was a good gift. Something to remind her of Wonderland."

"It's very thoughtful, dear, but..." Wendy hesitated.

"Didn't your house-guest give you my message?" Albert asked, perhaps harsher than he intended.

"He said one of my lady-friends was ill or something and in the hospital," Dorothy waved her hand. "I assumed it would be Jane, popping like a little balloon at last! But alas upon further questioning he said he thought it was someone elderly. So I rushed to get ready and fetch Alice's gift and came right along after lunch." She paused and took note of their expressions, her smile swiftly disappearing. "I've mistaken a terrible tragedy for a simple affair, haven't I?"

They all nodded.

"Just tell me. Don't waste words."

"She's dying, Dorothy," Jane said. "I am sorry for you to find out like this. She isn't sick. She fell and hurt herself dreadfully."

Dorothy looked as if she had been hit hard in the stomach and all wind had been knocked out of her. "You can't be serious," she said slowly. "This is a terrible prank you're all playing on me."

"We wouldn't do that to you," Susan said, feeling suddenly protective of Dorothy's feelings. She could be so cold at times to others, and Susan recognized this in herself. She knew the coldness was only a mask to hide turmoil and despair on the inside.

"It was a very bad fall," Jane explained again. "She's bleeding internally. They can do nothing to stop it, but they're trying to make her comfortable. She's been sedated, but she's been awake for quite some time, so I think they were giving her morphine instead. So that she could talk... and laugh. And say goodbye."

Dorothy slumped against the wall. She looked down at the rose in her hands as if it had personally betrayed her. Susan felt compelled to rise and cross the hall to sit beside Dorothy, gently patting the pale hands that held the rose. She noticed callouses and a roughness of her palms from hard farm work as a child. Even after God knows how long in Oz, she still bore the toil of a Kansas prairie.

Dorothy did not seem too keen on Susan's comfort. "Well," she said, leaning forward and placing the flower pot on the floor beside her feet. "I am aghast. Surely she isn't sitting alone in that room?"

"Her son is there, and an old friend," Wendy said. "Someone managed to come from Wonderland to say goodbye. They called him Chess."

"Funny looking chap," Jane said.

"Handsome?" Albert asked.

"Certainly," Susan said far too quickly. Then she felt her face heat up. "I mean, not _ugly."_

"How did he get here?" Dorothy asked. "If he has some sort of magical amulet that actually _works,_ I wonder if he'd let me borrow it."

"Could you not worry about the amulet for once?" Albert sighed. "Alice isn't well!"

Dorothy crossed her arms defensively, leaned back and looked down the hall. "I can't do what she did," she said quietly. "I can't be trapped here forever and grow old and die in an old hospital like this with nothing but my memories. Forgive me for always seeking a way out of this drafty, horrible little world."

"Well, this drafty, horrible little world is filled with people who would be your friends, should you be misfortunate enough to stay," Wendy pointed out.

The door opened and Chess came out, looking exhausted and tearful. He looked up, somewhat startled at the crowd all politely seated in waiting chairs and looking at him expectantly.

"Won't be much longer now," he said after a moment of recovery. "She's been sedated again. Her pulse is slowing. She'll likely drift off to sleep." He suddenly realized he was still wearing his hat and whipped it from the top of his head, holding and twisting it in his hands.

"Won't you sit with us?" Wendy asked. "We've never met anyone from Wonderland before."

Like a puppet, he walked jerkily down the hall and sat on the other side of Dorothy. He looked down at the potted rose and had a brief moment of recognition. Then he crossed, re-crossed his legs, crossed his arms, leaned back, and then leaned forward again, folding his fingers together and letting them hang towards the floor.

They stared at him.

He slowly looked up and realized this. "So you're all, ah... friends... of Alice?" he broke the silence.

"We're a society of friends who believe in magical travels," Albert explained. "You're our first visitor from another world who is... um... a native, I suppose."

"You've all been to Wonderland?" Chess asked.

Dorothy pointed a finger at each person in turn. "Other lands, you see. They're Neverland. She's Narnia. He's gone nowhere he'd admit. Oz, for myself."

Chess was nodding but he clearly had no fathomable idea what she meant.

"I don't suppose you've heard of Oz?" Dorothy asked. "Perhaps it is a land you can travel to by crossing a Wonderland sea?"

He looked at her gravely. "I don't really think we have a sea. We have lemonade."

For once, Dorothy was stunned into silence. She remembered Alice describing the characters of Wonderland speaking in riddles and nonsense half the time, but certainly didn't except them to take their own nonsensical answers so seriously.

"Will you be returning to Wonderland?" Susan asked.

Chess shrugged and refused to answer.

" _Can_ you return if you wanted?" Wendy amended.

Chess shook his head vehemently.

Dorothy opened her mouth to question him thoroughly, but the door opened then, and Andrew Jr. emerged.

His face told the whole story, and they knew Alice had come peacefully to the end of her own.

...

The day of the funeral dawned clear and bright. The season was waning, and the storms would soon come. Susan felt uncomfortable choosing her mourning clothes. For the funeral of her entire family, she had chosen the most stylish outfit possible and a hat with a tasteful veil. She hated to look less that perfect, even for sadness.

But now, that thought disgusted her. How she had tarried and worried over looking her best and applying make up for her public appearance. Now, she left her face freshly washed and makeup-less. She chose the simplest black dress and coat, one that would not draw attention. How she had changed in just a few short months.

For obvious reasons, all mention of Wonderland was left out of the service. It would be terrible to sully Alice's good name in the eyes of her friends and family that came to pay their respects by bringing up her belief in magic. The disquieting thought of leaving an impression that said _maybe she should have been committed to an asylum_ was unbearable. _No... leave Alice's reputation as it was, kindly and hospitable,_ Susan thought. _A comforter and ruler in her own right._

It was agreed between the Traveler's Society of Magical Wanderings members that their own meeting should take place after, where they can speak freely and remember Alice for what she loved the most; her children, and Wonderland... and, to Susan's knowledge only, someone called Hatter whom she never saw again.

This confession from Alice broke Susan's heart now that she tried to believe too. She wondered who this Hatter was, and if he really had anything to do with hats, and if he missed Alice as much as she missed him.

She hoped she could speak with this Chess person about it.

...

It was in her favor then that Hank Sr. invited both Andrew Jr. (and Chess, once he was informed he was staying with Andrew indefinitely) to their meeting. Andrew Jr. declined politely, citing reasons that Wonderland truly belonged to Alice alone, and his presence would shatter the illusion of her sacred place among other magical travelers.

"It's really just... tea," Hank Sr. had replied kindly over the telephone. "No illusions here."

"Her death is still too near," Andrew Jr. explained. "And my grief renders me incapable of social interactions, I'm afraid. But I think my new Wonderlandian flat-mate would really love to participate."

Chess was unfamiliar with English gentry and their frankness with _describing_ emotions without showing them. He was also ignorant of customs and manners that urged polite distances and lack of touch unless it was a firm handshake. He spotted Andrew Jr. in the hall on the telephone and ran to join him, believing one would only have one shot to send a message through. He smashed his face against Andrew's to share the mouth piece of the telephone and shouted loudly, "COULD I GET A LIFT, SIR? There's not a SINGLE caucus racer here!"

...

They found themselves again in the abandoned underground, lit and warmed by Albert's routine to light a fire and put the kettle on the hot plate. Jane and Wendy arrived and immediately embraced and kissed Susan like family, and this warmed her heart.

Pauline and Hank Jr. brought Hank Sr. and Chess, his eyes round as saucers as he took in what felt common place to the rest. They quietly instructed him to sit anywhere he would like, which he took to mean he dropped right where he stood, sitting cross-legged on the floor instead of a chair. Susan felt the urge to laugh at him but did not want to be rude. _I would have laughed three months ago,_ she thought.

Dorothy made everyone breathe a little sigh of relief by jumping right into calling the meeting to order, there would be no awkward silence as they struggled to come to grips with the fact that Alice would never call them to anything ever again.

"For those of you who are new," she said, opening the old photo album. She read the letter from Marie Stahlbaum about her adventure with the Nutcracker prince, and her promise that there were _others_ out there like themselves.

Chess clapped politely when she finished.

Jane and Susan immediately caught eyes, and Susan was relieved to see Jane's eyes twinkle with amusement too.

"I think it's best to say we're all very interested in what you have to say," Dorothy directed to Chess. "Such as how you came to be here - and I think the question burning on everyone's mind is - how were you allowed to come, when Alice was unable to go back?"

Chess adjusted his legs uncomfortably on the floor, wringing his hands that held his hat. He did not wish to put his hat on the hat tree by the door like everyone else did.

"You may sit in a chair if you like," Dorothy said dryly.

"Oh, yes, pardon me," Chess jumped to his feet, crossed the room, and sat between Susan and Pauline. Pauline shifted ever so slightly closer to her brother, and let out a quiet little sneeze into her sleeve.

"I am a _Shift_ from Wonderland," he said, by way of trying to begin at the beginning. It was obvious that public speaking was uncomfortable from him.

"What's a shift?" Pauline asked immediately.

"I shift," Chess replied, tilting his head confusedly. "Do you not have _shifts_ here?"

"There's no magic in this world, unless it visits us," Wendy explained.

"Shifts aren't magic in Wonderland," Chess shrugged. "It's just... normal to us. I don't know what you'd consider magic and what you wouldn't."

"You've probably never traveled anywhere but Wonderland, haven't you?" Susan felt the need to ease his discomfort. "So you have no basis for comparison."

"That's _precisely_ it," he answered with relief. "Also, you are _very_ pretty! What's your name again?"

Susan blushed. Wendy and Pauline gasped with the impropriety of the question, but Jane and Albert, being the youngest, howled with laughter.

"That's S-S-S-Susan," Hank Jr. giggled.

"All right, calm down, you clowns," Dorothy tapped her foot on the floor. "Let the poor boy finish and tell us about _Shifts._ What precisely are they, and what do they do?"

"There's all kinds of _Shifts,"_ Chess replied. "Varieties. Pigs and snarks, sharks and turtles, dodos and dogs. Um, lets see... flamingos and dingos, twinkle-twinkle-bats, and my personal favorite, cats."

 _I don't like cats,_ thought Susan.

"Um, which, uh, sh-sh-shift are you?" Hank Jr. asked, entirely fascinated with this new visitor.

"Cat," Chess answered. "I shift into a cat."

"You're a shapeshifter?" Albert shrieked with a huge grin.

"Oh!" Chess looked relieved. "So you _do_ have shifts here? But they go by 'shapeshifters' instead?"

"You mistake me, I'm very excited," Albert said. "We don't. At all. But _shapeshifters_ reside in our fairy tales. Our mythical legends. People that can change into animals."

 _In Narnia,_ Susan thought, _We had animals who were already people._ Then suddenly, her brain tuned out everything that was happening around her. Albert, Chess, and Dorothy were talking animatedly.

This may have been the first time Susan had thought about Narnia in a _factual_ way, rather than prefacing the thought with 'my sister thinks' or 'my foolish brother believes'. This was a memory of Narnia that belonged to her, and her alone. It was hers, and she remembered it as if it were real. There really _were_ animals in Narnia who were also people... but what were their names? She had to recall at least _one_ of them...

 _Mr. and Mrs. Beaver,_ Susan thought with a smile, feeling the familiar sharp sensation in the bridge of her nose and throat that indicated she may break down in tears in front of everyone. _Mrs. Beaver would have been the first to scold me so dreadfully for turning my back... I wish I could beg their forgiveness..._

"I am a Cheshire cat, but my friends call me Chess," the newcomer was saying.

"Can you shift now?" Albert asked.

"I do not wish to be rude, but," Pauline coughed, "I am _deathly_ allergic to cats. Perhaps after I've gone."

Chess shook his head. "I am afraid you'll just have to take my word for it. I've shifted once or twice before in this world since I've arrived and the effect is far different."

Susan remembered a cat running subtly out of the alleyway the first time she saw Chess.

"I'm chased and kicked and shoved and suddenly every smell and sound has to be explored," he continued, " and I can barely control my stripes or my smoke. I shift into a very funny looking little cat and try not to always follow the smell of fish. Disappearing is easiest, but I can't even _float_ here."

Albert clearly had a million questions, all of them might be irrelevant to what was important.

"I would be very interested to know," Susan said, emboldened by the memory. "Why you did not say hello to Alice when you first approached me outside the station."

Chess looked uncomfortable.

"You've seen him before?" Dorothy asked. "And you didn't say anything?"

"He just seemed like a stranger standing across the way," Susan answered. "I thought he was a drunk." She returned her attention to Chess. "You saw Alice get into the cab. Why didn't you say hello to her?"

"I only had two reasons for coming back," the Cheshire "cat" replied. "Firstly, all my friends in Wonderland are dead. The magic is growing unpredictable and everyone's... _thinking_ again. We've been happily living in a dream for generations before but it has changed. The Red and White Queens are at war and the people pay the price. The jabberwocky slaughters without mercy. Suddenly everyone wants something and has the sense to try and get it no matter who gets hurt, and now, nothing makes sense."

"Is that why Alice was not allowed to come back?" Susan felt his words rang true. She remembered Alice describing as much when she confided in Susan. "Because nothing was nonsensical anymore. It was dangerous. Something was keeping her out."

"I'm afraid it's a horrible story," Cheshire said. "Hatter received a warning from our spy on the inside, the White Knight, that they'd been found out by the enemy. You see, we were on the side of the people's revolution... to elect a new Queen from one of our own and re-start the entire monarchy. The Red and White Queens didn't care who they hurt in the process of fighting over the land and one true crown. So it was a war between three sides. Hatter and Alice were truly the leaders of the people's revolution, the rebels.

"The White Queen knew that Alice was planning to travel to her world to collect weapons of the future for her people, technology that we couldn't possibly imagine. She cast a spell on the portals to sense Alice's beating heart and rip it from her body should she ever attempt to come back into our world, and was on her way to invade our hidden camp. The White Knight gave us fair enough warning. So Hatter devised a plan to send Alice away 'temporarily' and promised they'd be together again.

"Once she was gone, he laid a spell that stopped the portals from working. Every looking-glass and rabbit hole and fissure and grandfather clock was all locked up. I knew about it before and did not warn her, and I always felt very guilty for betraying her trust. But I wanted her to live too, and I knew she'd try to sacrifice herself and bring us the weapons anyway, even if she knew she'd die coming back. She really believed in the cause."

 _I never knew she was a warrior..._ Susan thought.

"She was very brave," Hank Sr. said gruffly. "Braver than us all."

"So, she went through a rabbit hole to go home," Chess nodded. "Hatter used the _Essence of Closure_ spell, and minutes later the Pawns found the camp, slaughtered everyone except myself and Hatter. They dragged us out of the woods and into town, only half a mile away, and hosted a shoddy trial to make a spectacle of killing the leaders of the rebels, and taking a note from the Queen of Heart's bloody reign years ago, beheaded Hatter and myself on the spot for Treasonous Activity."

There was a horrible silence.

"Beheaded you?" Dorothy asked crisply.

Cheshire looked up at her. He held up his hand as if asking a question in a classroom. Suddenly, his skin started to become transparent. A smoky stripe began to wrap around his wrist, up his palm, and around his fingers. The tighter the strip wound, the clearer his hand became. Until there was no hand at all, and it disappeared in a puff of smoke.

The whole room burst into awed, shocked, and applause-like exclamations.

"Good HEAVENS!" Susan shrieked, once again, completely floored by the appearance of magic. Seeing it happen directly across the room from her was even more real than seeing Peter Pan's ship flying the heavens.

With a flick, his hand was back.

"That was a very neat trick," Dorothy said, not quite as impressed as the rest of them. "But you still have your head."

"If you really want the graphic details," Cheshire said uncomfortably. "I turned to smoke, just around my neck. So the killer's blade passed through nothing at all. But they were too dumb to notice the difference. We were 'dead' and left to bleed on the executioner's platform. The White's Queen's people returned to the palaces. I waited till the villagers began to consider whether to bury or burn all the dead from the camp in the woods and I fled."

Wendy was tearful. "Poor, poor Hatter... poor Alice... and yourself. What a tragedy."

"And you told that poor, wonderful woman on her death bed what happened to Hatter?" Hank Sr. erupted.

"Not all of it," Cheshire bowed his head in shame. "I couldn't. I told her there was a spell that kept her out and that it wasn't her fault for not being able to come back. She didn't suspect Hatter laid the spell himself for a minute, she assumed it was one of the Queens tired of her interference. She asked me if Hatter lived a long and happy life and found love again. I assured her that he never loved anyone more than her, and when he finally passed away, she was the last thought on his mind. I _couldn't_ tell her he died a mere ten minutes after she left. I could not deliver that blow." He looked up, his eyes darkening with tears. "Am I _wrong?"_

Hank Sr. looked sorry for his initial suspicion. "No, that wasn't wrong."

"It was for the best," Wendy said comfortingly.

"I guess we'll never know, though, will we?" Jane wondered out loud. "I think it is the best sort of closure one could hope for. She died with burning questions finally answered by an old friend, and with her last-living son by her side and was able to say goodbye to all her friends."

Dorothy rolled her eyes ever so slightly. _"Almost_ all of her friends."

Cheshire pulled a blue and pink striped hanky from his pocket and wiped his nose, and took a deep, shuddering breath.

"You said you left Wonderland for two reasons," Susan pointed out. "That your friends passed away was the first. What was the second?"

Cheshire tucked the hanky away. "While she was living in Wonderland, Alice used to make us recite the address of her parent's estate, over and over again, in a sort of song. She wanted to make sure that if a portal _ever_ managed to work for one of us, which it never did before, we'd know where to go. So far, she had been the only one who had been able to Travel back and forth between worlds. But the Queen's Heart-Repo spell, our Essence of Closure spell, quite literally, wore off after her death. There was a great battle and one Queen killed the other. When that happened, the husks fell from every portal after many many years of overgrowth and suddenly the ability to go back and forth were back.

"But I thought, quite honestly, that if a resident from _my_ Wonderland attempted to go through a portal that we would just cease to exist. I was in a terrible place of despair, I had no friends and the war waged on even after the death of the Queen and the land was decimated. I went through a portal with the intention that I would never emerge alive."

"Thank God that this was not the case," Wendy said disapprovingly. "How terrible to try and take your own life!"

"Where did you come out?" Albert asked gently.

Chess sighed. "Some place called _Kings Cross Station._ So I began to recite Alice's estate's address to any passer-by I could stop. A few managed to at least point me in the right direction. I traveled and begged and starved for three days till I arrived there, and the house-staff told me the Little family was long dead, there were new occupants, and Alice Little had married a Whitmore. So I was directed to the Whitmore estate and found _that_ staff, and they said Mr.  & Mrs. Whitmore were no longer living together."

Susan grimaced. She really hoped Cheshire wouldn't air Alice's divorce for her husband's infidelity in front of everyone, especially when she wasn't around to tell her side of the story. But her worries were premature.

"Alice had moved into town to be closer to her doctor years and years ago," Chess explained, "And she only came to the estate to summer, so the staff said. So _then_ I followed their directions to Alice's home, and found her butler, who told me how to get to the underground. When I spotted her and saw that she had friends and looked very happy, I did not want to spoil any life she had crafted for herself. I knew she would have been devastated after leaving. If she had found happiness, I was afraid I would ruin it for her."

Albert shook his head. "You know that's foolish now, don't you? A lie that a sick mind will craft, that somehow by your mere existence, you ruin things for others around you. But you _know_ that's not the truth, don't you?"

Chess looked away. " _Knowing_ is easier than _believing._ "

Susan was amazed, and somewhat chastised. She could not honestly remember if she had been unkind to him, but she did send him on his way. Even though he was a strange young man approaching on a darkening street and she was completely within her rights to say what she did, if she had known he was so terribly depressed, would her reaction have been the same?

"What happened after you... um... were in the alley and left?" Susan asked.

"I wandered about. Trying _not_ to wander too close to any temptations and not starve. I stopped by Alice's house many times, and each time, I lost my nerve to speak with her. I was still the same age as when she left, we don't really age in Wonderland. Not after becoming a grown-up, anyway. I told myself she'd envy my age and it was rude to show up as I was when she has lived such a long and fruitful life. She had earned her age, as it were. I wouldn't be right to insert myself into her life again."

"Still untrue," Albert pointed out.

"All the same," Chess sighed. "The day I finally summoned enough courage to ring the doorbell again, the butler recognized me from my first visit, and told me she had gone to the hospital that very day."

"That's incredible," Jane interjected. "To find your courage on the day, and to speak to her before she passed. There are greater forces at work here, don't you think?"

"I believe so," Cheshire looked down at his hat again.

"Does Andrew Jr. know that he needs to keep an eye on you?" Albert asked, straightforwardly. Susan remembered her own first time meeting Albert; she had been shocked when he called her out on being rude. And now, Albert was the same for Cheshire. Saying the words that most would be too polite to say, but Albert did not see the need to mince words at any given time. "Does he know to keep sharp objects and weapons away from you? Use the loo with the door open?"

"Albert! Manners!" Wendy said.

Dorothy shook her head. "No, Albert's right." The entirety of the tea club all looked at Dorothy with amazement. It was a magical world indeed if she would ever agree with Albert on anything.

 _Will wonders never cease?_ Susan thought.

Cheshire nodded. "Andrew Jr. wouldn't let me leave the hospital alone. He told me I needed to come stay with him for the time being. Which I appreciate, I do. But I am not any danger to myself, I swear it. I _was._ But when I emerged alive at the crossing of the kingly monsters you call trains, I was relieved. I felt _very_ relieved. I didn't know I didn't want to die until it would have been too late to change it. But I was lucky, I got a second chance. And staying with Andrew Jr. meant I overheard your club invitation and I just knew I had to participate."

Albert didn't seem satisfied with the explanation, but Susan felt Cheshire was telling the truth. And yet she still could not help the feeling something was missing.

"You couldn't have taken her back with you?" she ventured quietly. The heads of the other club member's swiveled towards her in shock for asking such a question. "If you had _gone_ to her. On the first sight, by the cab, in the street. If you had gone to her then and invited her back to Wonderland. Could she have gone with you?"

Albert pinched her arm. Not hurtfully, but the sign of a true friend, feeling free to express that she had taken it one step too far.

Cheshire's face was bleak. Susan wondered if she imagined a nod.

"It seems Mr. Chess had his own journey he needed to take, for himself," Wendy said, both with the stern tone of a scolding mother and the kindliness of a friend. She turned to Susan. "Nothing could have prevented what happened to Alice."

"Do you blame me?" Cheshire asked.

"No," Susan answered. Albert and Jane could probably see she was backpedaling, but the others may not. Susan was too good of an actress; for the years she believed Narnia never happened. It was good practice. "What I meant, was," she amended, "I was just wondering about the portals to Wonderland. If they work both ways now, you see, now that the spell has been lifted." She took a deep breath, and said something she hadn't believed for a long time. "Everything happens for a reason," she admitted quietly. "Alice knew that. I don't blame you. I just have a lot of questions about magic."

"She's still n-n-new to us," Hank Jr. said.

"And she too has experienced great and recent losses," Hank Sr. added. "Something you two have in common."

Cheshire and Susan regarded each other with a sort of apologetic suspicion. Hank Sr. was a romantic to a fault. But timing was everything, and he may not have meant anything by it.

...

Midsummer was giving into late summer, and London could not decide who it wanted to be when it grew up. Open markets gave way to tents and awnings, moving closer and closer indoors until there may only be an open barrel of produce outside on the walk. Susan noted the grocer's began to put out apples and squashes. Could it really nearly be September? Seasonal vegetables aside, she couldn't believe that it had only been that spring beneath the rain that a certain Dorothy Gale had opened her umbrella over the two of them and then later sent a friend to try and abduct her. Susan had never been so cold, so heartless.

And now she remembered why it was so easy to be heartless; one could never be hurt if one didn't have a heart.

She missed Alice, with her cascading silver braid down her back and her twinkling blue eyes full of secrets. The tea club didn't seem right without her; in fact, it hadn't felt right _at all_ since Susan began to craft a belief in magic again. As an outsider looking in, it was easy to see why they met in an abandoned underground tube... because it was right to be ashamed of such beliefs. A crazy cult should keep their faith below the surface.

But now that Susan believed too, everything bubbled to the surface. And it wanted to stay. Why meet in a drafty underground tunnel? She didn't feel that same shame anymore. She wanted to treat Dorothy to real scones and tea in a real tea shop. She wanted to take Jane out on to find a _real_ department store for more baby clothes. She wanted Wendy to feel free to read stories to the children's hospital on Ormond street on the same nights they hosted tea club in the dark. Hank Sr. was aging rapidly and confessed, disguised as a joke, that he'd rather walk to the park every day to meet his old friend, Bertram, for a game of chess, playing his favorite strategy game happily till the day he 'bit the dust'. Pauline was actually seeing someone, a professor ten years older than she, and they were well on their way to discussing marriage the way one might discuss tax evasion or installing the dishwashers that only the very wealthy could boast of owning. Andrew Jr. took Cheshire to see a doctor and took him to church on Sundays, drove him to and from the Tea Club meetings, and consistently invited the Morgans over for supper. Andrew and Hank Sr. were good friends, and Hank Jr. was entranced by Cheshire's magic abilities, what little he chose to use while living in the real world. The Tea Club began to feel like more of an obligatory membership to an institution that no one wanted to admit had overstayed its welcome. Was it hindering them from being able to ever move forward with their lives? Maybe having a club in a secret, dusty club house was the problem. Maybe they never considered the fact that they should just all be _friends,_ and meet for supper and drinks and card games like real friends do?

Why bother living at all, if they don't live out loud?

"Do you remember when I said Alice would want us to keep meeting the way we always have, and so we should?" Susan asked Jane one day, as the two of them enjoyed a hot, August afternoon. They tried to ignore the faint breeze bringing in a heavy stink from the Thames, and bought ice cream from a cyclist vendor to enjoy at an outdoor cafe table.

"I do," Jane replied with a mouthful. "I was afraid you'd stop coming after that, and we wouldn't see you anymore."

Susan considered a melting drip down the side of the paper cup, and licked it before it reached her hand. "I wonder if I was wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"Isn't this so much nicer?" Susan gestured to the sunshine, the tables, a stray napkin rushing down the sidewalk in the wind. "Don't you think Alice would be _just_ as happy if we just acted like family, instead of a secret club?"

Jane nodded. "It's something to consider."

"I'm not embarrassed to meet with any of you, not anymore," Susan confessed. "Not even in public. Even with Dorothy's outfits, Hank making some inappropriate comments about Yanks, and your mother's devotion to a boy living on an island in the sky. I don't care anymore. Who is to say we can't all meet up for dinner at a restaurant sometime?"

Jane smiled. "I would like that very much." She patted her belly. "Things will change with the baby, anyhow. I can't go down those stairs forever. And I can't raise my child underground as if there is some shameful secret to bear. I've known for awhile things would change for me, but I had no clue anyone felt the same."

"We should break them in slowly," Susan smiled back at her. "I shall... host some picnic or something. Outdoors, in the sun. A social event. Talk would soon turn to magical things and before we know it... we're having a tea club meeting in _public._ And I guarantee none of us will be suddenly swarmed by doctors in white coats and be locked up. We'll be just as safe as meeting in an abandoned tube station."

"I like this plan. You can use me as an excuse, to accommodate how fat I've become. They won't say no to a pregnant woman."

"Brilliant!"

They burst into raucous laughter.

 _This is how it should be,_ Susan thought. _We're a Traveler's Society of Magical Wanderings, not Nazi sympathizers. We don't need to hide anymore. I think Alice would like that. I'm ready to pick up the pieces and move on. I'm READY._

Even as she thought it, she remembered that there was one thing holding her back from fully moving on; her brother's flat near Oxford. The rent was due in one week. If she cleaned out their possessions and had it ready by the date rent was due, the proprietor said he would forgive the payment for September... due to the circumstances... and find a new tenant. Could she really let it go? She could barely afford to pay it, but it could feasibly be done, if only for September, and let the flat go at the end of October instead.

No. Now was the time. Did she not just think about how ready she was to try life again?

It was time to face the last home of Peter and Edmund Pevensie... the place where Peter and Jane had foolishly and happily made love (and a neice-to-be), where Edmund studied hard for the exams he never got to take, where Lucy would go and stay a few weeks at a time after graduating secondary school and hoped to attend college herself.

Susan was suddenly inspired. Maybe it was the warm sunlight, the budding friendship. The broken pieces of her heart mending themselves together.

"Why don't I go back to the cyclist and buy some chocolate," she suggested. "We can stop at Andrew Jr.'s on the way back. Don't you think he and Cheshire would like some? I doubt a cat from Wonderland has ever had it before."

Jane nearly choked on her ice cream with laughter. "No, I doubt a cat from Wonderland has ever had chocolate from an ice-cream cart on three wheels before."

...

* * *

...

 _Thanks for reading, sorry this chapter took so long. This story is just so freaking dense and it takes a lot of time to craft and I am constantly researching to stay historically accurate. My search history on google would crack you guys up..._

 _"paintings in the lobby of middlesex hospital"_

 _"walking directions from King William Street tube station to Middlesex hospital"_

 _"cancer treatments in London England 1940s"_

 _"when did they start selling ice cream in England"_

 _"abandoned tube station under Regis office building"_

 _"list of European tornado outbreaks"_

 _"when and where were the white roses with red stripes on them first bred"_

 _"map of wonderland"_

 _"lost hospitals of London"_

 _"late 1940s fashion in London England"_

 _"Weather in 1949 London England"_

 _"when did the Pevensies die on a train crash"_

 _"Severn Valley Railway"_

 _Please leave a review! :)_


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